


one septendecillion brass doorknobs

by Bootstrap_Paradox



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: (Just a little bit), (mild) Horror, ADHD Dirk Gently, Action/Adventure, Adventure, Autistic Dirk Gently, Canon Continuation, Case Fic, Comedy, Douglas Adams, Gen, Humor, Implied Brotzly, Mystery, Novel, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, S3, Science Fiction, Season/Series 03, he's just very neurodivergent idk, season three, season three fan version
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 82,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25668211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bootstrap_Paradox/pseuds/Bootstrap_Paradox
Summary: The cogs and circuits of the great machine of inter-connectedness are once again in motion. A Thing is missing. In fact, several things are missing, and they have to be returned to their rightful owners. After a whole month of peace and quiet, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency has two whole new cases to solve. And what a fine pair of cases they are.The journey will start close to home and venture beyond the Earth, far into the cosmos. It will connect an old professor (and his young friend), a paranoid billionaire, world’s worst mercenary and a band of mysterious twenty-somethings in a cool van.Yes, the Rowdy Three are also there. Yes, there is more than one cool van in this book.(You can’t go wrong with a cool van)Read on to discover more of Dirk’s past and Amanda’s future, of the successes and errors of Black Wing supervisor Adams, of unspoken feelings and disappearing music boxes and meanings lost in translation.Oh, and could there be someone watching this all from behind the reality curtains?..
Comments: 154
Kudos: 77





	1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is dedicated to and is a massive thank you to Douglas Adams, the wonderful DGHDA fandom, and every amazing person who contributed to the BBC A Dirk Gently TV-show*
> 
> *except for M*x L*ndis, abusers don't get thanks for anything :)
> 
> This is *my* version of DGHDA Season 3, written not as an imitation but as a tribute to Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently novels. Yes, it is full novel length. You have been warned…

None of this would have happened if he could just keep track of all of his useless trinkets.

On the day when it did happen, professor Daly woke up eleven and a half minutes later than usual, regarded his dust-ridden, disheveled surroundings, and decided to be accidentally late to work.

At 9:16 AM, he had lost an honorable battle against the moldy stain at the bottom of his fridge. The streak of defeat continued in a not dissimilar fashion on the battleground of his bathroom, and the barren wasteland of his living room floor. Professor Daly was not home frequently. 

At 10:58 he had given up entirely, and retreated to his old study - abandoned thirty years prior, two months after it was constructed - which was suffering a hideous spiderweb infestation. He began by removing about a cubic centimeter of dust from his desk, and opening the window (so as to prevent inhaling said dust). It improved matters somewhat. He then proceeded to sort out his shelves, stacked with typing machine paper and his memorabilia collection. This is when a tedious morning had suddenly turned alarming.

At 11:11 AM exactly, professor Daly had discovered that the music box was missing. 

There was nothing valuable or exceptional about the music box - at least not where money was concerned. It was a small, dainty thing, decorated with brass vines and leaves, covered by something that was definitely not gold on top. It once belonged to professor’s close friend, Arthur. In fact, the music box was the only thing that remained of Arthur. The man had disappeared five years prior. Unfortunately for him, under no suspicious circumstance, which is a decent guess as to why his disappearance was never investigated. 

He left behind nothing other than a faculty position to fill and a stack of academic papers tall enough to reach the top of an average sized ficus plant. 

The music box was given to professor Daly not long before Arthur vanished. He instructed on how to wind it up and keep the mechanism well-oiled and running smoothly, put a hand atop professor’s hand and smiled. Arthur was known for making all sorts of machines, trinkets and curiosities, and nothing brought him more joy than gifting these things to his friends, which he had many.

To this day, the music box was a warm if bittersweet reminder of Arthur’s life… and now it was gone.

The rest of the morning to the late afternoon was spent in a frantic search of the professor’s modest apartment. Even with all the dark corners and floor tile cracks, there weren’t many places in which a whole music box could have been lost. No one to take it either; it’s been, at a rough estimate, two or so years since professor had last invited in a guest. Hence the heightened state of entropy in his dwelling.

At 3:44 PM, the exhausted, hungry, perplexed professor had ceased his third inspection of the apartment and fell backwards into an armchair. There was a faint sound of a deflated balloon which, with equal probability, could have been produced either by the professor’s lungs or the beaten down chair he had fallen into. 

It couldn’t be denied any further. The music box was gone.

What on Earth might explain this, professor wondered. First, he applied the principle of Occam’s razor and, taken into account his considerable age, he postulated that his mind and memory were playing tricks on him. Perhaps he had hidden the music box away and have since forgotten its location. Second, he applied the principle of Occam’s garden hoe (which he pioneered in his quantum mechanics lectures back in 1987) and postulated that the box had fallen through the cracks between atomic nuclei and had no current whereabouts on the macroscopic level. Then he had decided that it was time for another cup of coffee.

He postulated some more while brewing the coffee, then postulated additionally while enjoying it. And the more he postulated, the more it occurred to him that the disappearance of a box was even more mysterious than the disappearance of its maker, which, he quickly realized, gave it a slightly better chance of being investigated.

It wasn’t just a music box after all; it was his last connection to a dear friend, a physical placeholder for a whole warehouse worth of precious memories. And memories tend to become even more valuable with age. They are, presumably, the one kind of a treasure a man can hope to carry with them beyond the veil of our world and through the gates to heaven. Yes, professor nodded to himself. The mystery of the missing music box simply had to be uncovered.

There was, of course, another pressing reason for finding the trinket.

When Arthur gave it to professor Daly all those years ago, sunshine smile still lingering on his kind, wrinkled face, the one thing he had said after the safekeeping instructions was:

“…and by God, Roger, do not let this thing fall into the wrong hands.”

And professor didn’t question it back then, just as he never questioned any rest of the bizarre and puzzling things Arthur used to say, for he had no worry of the music box ever leaving his study.

Except now it was gone… and who knew what kind of wrong hands could have gotten the hold of a tiny music box that played Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers when wound.

*

At 4:55PM, Farah Black, Todd Brotzman, and Dirk Gently were about to lock up the office door for the day, and head out for a late dinner. They had spent the last hour of their “workday” arguing about an appropriate location and never arrived at a conclusion that satisfied all parties involved. The argument was the most exciting thing that has happened to them all day, or, indeed, all week.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was currently undergoing a slow streak. Well, “slow” was a rather generous description; more so, the work has came to a complete halt. One of the office walls was decorated with a large piece of glossy white paper, on which stubby lines were drawn in black sharpie. There were exactly twenty seven such lines. The paper was titled (also in black sharpie): “days since our last case”.

The paper was the blank side of a Mexican Funeral poster. The stage photo side was now facing the wall at Todd’s request because, according to Todd, he didn’t look “presentable enough” on the poster.

“Last chance to vote,” Farah announced, turning off the lights and fumbling with her belt in search of the office door key. “Pancakes or rice noodles?”

“I’ve made my opinion known,” Todd replied. “Pancakes are not dinner. There’s nothing to discuss here even.”

“Seriously, Todd?” Dirk shook his head, not angry but mildly disappointed. “A month ago we saved a talking frog from being wrongfully convicted of murder, but you draw the line at breakfast food for dinner.”

“I just want to have a normal meal with vegetables for a change.” Todd was currently checking his pockets for his phone and not finding it. “There is such a thing as too much of a good, uh, thing, you know.”

“We haven’t eaten pancakes since Wednesday!” Dirk protested.

“It’s Friday,” Farah pointed out. “Are we leaving or not?”

“Wait.” Todd stopped her. “I think I left my phone in the office.”

“Be quick please,” Dirk urged him. “The pancake place closes at six.”

Todd had ignored this apparent declaration of victory, rolled his eyes in silence and headed back into the office to retrieve his phone.

“Another week without a case, huh,” Farah said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Unlike Todd, she was aware of the pattern in Dirk’s behaviour, in which his sugar cravings were inversely correlated with his mood.

Dirk didn’t reply. Unlike Farah, he never mastered the skill of putting on a smile and brushing off his worries for the benefit of others.

“It says in our ad that the line is open 24/7,” Farah continued. “So, you know, someone might call in the middle of the night on a weekend.”

“Pff,” Dirk said.

It was all he was going to say, but couldn’t stop himself.

“No one will call,” he continued. “No one ever calls, Farah. This agency is a joke. The only way we get cases is when something falls on our heads, quite literally sometimes, turns our lives upside down and then downright endangers them, and results in no payment and barely any satisfaction. So no, they won’t call. Not on a weekend, not on a weekday, not ever.”

Precisely at that moment, just as Todd was collecting his phone from the office desk, it began to rang.

And so did Dirk’s.


	2. chapter 2

Kevin McDougall was on a mission to prevent his own murder.

As of Friday 4:03 PM, he was taking a crucial murder-preventing step of personally inspecting every closet, cupboard and storing space of his house on account of hidden assassins. This was a no trivial feat, considering that his house contained 42 rooms, including an indoor swimming pool and an underground cinema hosting up to 50 people. There were, in result, a lot of closets to check.

Kevin could always ask one of the five of his personal housemaids or a few of the nine of his personal security managers/bodyguards to do it for him, except he didn’t trust them anymore. In fact, as Kevin had concluded two days ago, he could, conceivably, trust himself and himself only. Any number of corrupt schemes and agreements could be hiding in plain sight; even the most loyal bodyguard or housemaid could be bribed, threatened, or recruited by his likely assassins.

No, this was a job better done without assistance. 

Now, having inspected all of his kitchens and living rooms, Kevin was engaged in the inspection of his library. The library was primarily used as a background for his instagram photos or for more casual business negotiations; in other words, it was used infrequently, and was therefore an excellent place for an assassin to hide. Meticulously, he ambled the room, peering into the darkness behind the cabinets. He was slightly disappointed to have discovered nothing but a few dead insects.

This has not discouraged Kevin. He had spent the best part of the week trying to uncover the plan behind his assassination, and no evidence to the contrary was able to dissuade him. Kevin did not require evidence; he had a feeling. The feeling of being watched, constantly, his every move recorded and analyzed for blatantly evil purposes. And Kevin always trusted his feelings. 

His grandmother was a clairvoyant (or so she claimed…) and had taught him from a young age to consider his intuition. This well-developed sense of intuition had, no doubt, allowed Kevin to not only keep but triple the fortune he had inherited from his father. And now that the same intuition was telling him that he was being targeted for some good old-fashioned killing, Kevin was rather inclined to take it seriously.

At 4:37 PM, he was more than half way done with the inspection, and, coincidentally, also about half way there to completing his daily 10,000 steps. The underground cinema has been declared assassin-free, and he had since moved on to checking all the bedrooms in the house. There were twelve of them. 

Earlier that week, Kevin had considered moving to his modest suburban house (which only had fifteen rooms) but realized that it would interfere with his business, and also with his golfing habits. 

Still, additional security simply had to be employed. Kevin nodded to himself as he walked the corridors between the bedrooms and dialed his head of security for the fifth time that day. After brief negotiations, it was decided that new motion tracking sensors will be added to the fences and lamp posts. It would cost him twenty thousand dollars, but that was a negligible price to pay for his safety.

Kevin McDougall did not believe in gods, the supernatural, and, indeed, in most perfectly human concepts either. What he did believe on Friday 4:45 PM were three things: 

A) someone was meticulously tracking him down  
B) it had something to do with his monetary fortune  
C) that someone was his ex-girlfriend, Alexandra 

*

Two out of three of those statement were true. 

Yes, someone really was tracking down billionaire and famous business owner Kevin McDougall. Yes, it did relate to his money in a way, though not in a way that you’d guess. But no, it was not connected to any of his ex-girlfriends.

The person who had dedicated the last two weeks of his life to this task was actually a mercenary by the name of Orson.

This had been Orson’s first gig as a mercenary. As of Friday 4:37 PM, Orson was trying to catch a bus to his motel room. 

(He didn’t have a car. Or a driver’s license.)

He had just concluded a very fruitful day of watching Kevin’s mansion, with a pair of pink plastic binoculars from a tree top of a dry sycamore. He considered this a productive day, and was planning to reward himself with a proper dinner for one.

If you were to sit next to Orson on that bus, it would have never occurred to you that you were sharing a seat with an assassin. Not only was Orson of a tall, skinny and lanky complexion associated frequently with grad students and software engineers, he was also wearing a checkered jumper that was clearly purchased for him by his mother and thick metal-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes and produced a slight resemblance to a polite fish. 

The pink binoculars sticking out of his backpack also played a role.

Were Buzzfeed to compose an article titled “15 people least likely to be mercenaries (number 4 is so true)”, Orson would have been number 4. Prior to becoming a mercenary, he had dabbled in photography, candle-making, baby-sitting, and professional dog-walking. None of these careers lasted long enough to at least be included as a bullet point on his CV.

The idea to become a mercenary has appeared to him in a lager-induced dream after an afternoon binge-read of Deadpool comics. Since Orson’s understanding of a mercenary’s job was mostly based on said comics, he had assumed that his day would consist predominantly of tracking down his targets and flirting with superheroes, sometimes in an elegant DIY-ed dress. This was satisfactory for Orson.

So far, he had succeeded in tracking down his target, which took him ten days of vigorous tracking down. After all, billionaires were not typically keen to share the location of their 42-room big mansions - at least not further than a general area. Luckily, Orson was nice and polite, and so were various local villagers (or their security guards). It only took him 17 pleasant conversations, including three invites for coffee and one invite for lunch, to triangulate down to Kevin’s house.

This week he had spent simply watching the house from a distance. His next step required getting an arm length close to Kevin, and he hadn’t yet devised a plan of how he could achieve that. Therefore, he resorted to taking it slow and gathering some intel first. 

Back on the 5 PM bus, an elderly woman was preparing to climb inside, unsure of how to balance a walking cane with a heavy bag of groceries. Having noticed this out of the corner of his eye, Orson was immediately on his feet and helping the old lady in. She thanked him profusely - twice - first when he supported her climb, and second when he gave up his seat for her. 

The bus took off at last. Orson now stood next to a window, leaning to his left, one hand swiping absent-mindedly through his instagram feed. (This was another way of gathering intel). Tomorrow, he would return to the village on the 9AM bus, and the watch would resume.

*

Unfortunately, the thorough search of the house and the premises did nothing to calm Kevin’s nerves. Though the pressing sensation of being watched had since subsided, it was but a brief respite from his ever-present fears. Was he delusional? Paranoid? All of his security guards were certainly of that opinion, even if none were willing to point it out to his face.

Kevin sat on his backyard veranda, watching the ducks in the artificial pond dart underwater for food (and, possibly, entertainment… Kevin did not know much about ducks). He was running out of ways to satisfy his need for murder prevention. Three days ago, when the feeling first appeared, he had contacted local police and was turned down, no matter how big of a bribe he waved in front of their noses. It’s not that police had any issues with bribes; it’s just that none of the officers could come up with a course of action that Kevin found reasonable.

He had also contacted numerous security specialists, private detectives, army officials, and even an FBI agent. All were either unhelpful or obvious liars. With the amount of money that Kevin had, being able to tell at once when he was being bullshited for pay was an essential skill. He even considered hiring his own assassin, but ultimately decided against it.

Still, a need remained, and his hands trembled, and extra motion sensors were not enough. With a heavy sigh, Kevin extracted his second iPhone from the pocket of his jeans and began once more to look through the list of private detectives. Three pages through, and he had found the only number he hadn’t called yet.

“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Cases Solved with Arguable Efficiency”.

It was 5:01 PM when Kevin dialed the number. The line was busy. Kevin almost growled in exasperation and dialed the other number (he was not used to waiting for someone to reply to his phone call - this was what other people did, not him). A minute of high-pitched beeps lingered…

…And the call was answered at last. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and comments on the first chapter! this work has by far the best kudos/hits ratio of anything i have written ever so i really am over the moon about this. 
> 
> my life is quite difficult right now on so many levels (including constant problems with my laptop...) but i promise i'll try my best to keep updating every few days to a week max!


	3. chapter 3

Two phonecalls, launched from different devices twenty miles apart, raced through the ether for victory yet arrived at their destination at the exact same time down to a second. Two annoyingly loud ringtones went off in the detective agency, disturbing a murder of crows that was lounging outside its windows. Crows were notoriously against after-hours phonecalls.

Dirk looked at Farah, then at his hand that was reaching out for the phone, almost in slow motion, like a ghoul reaches for the protagonist’s shoulder in a horror movie. Then he looked at Farah again. He had forgotten how to answer phones, and how to speak in general, and was waiting for permission from his brain to, at the very least, hand the phone over to Farah.

She beat him to it.

“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency,” she announced cheerfully into the phone, “Farah Black speaking.”

“Who is it?” Dirk demanded, his right hand flapping in the air as he gradually regained speech.

Farah didn’t respond, and nodded at the wall as she listened. Unable to contain his excitement, Dirk began to pace the corridor, almost breaking into a gallop at times. Currently he felt as though all of his blood had been replaced with popcorn butter and syrup, which congealed all of his thoughts into one unbreakable clump and made his hands tingle.

The sensation had only gotten worse when Todd stepped out of the office towards him and said:

“Hey guys, I think I have a potential client on call.”

This time, Dirk was the one to snatch the phone.

“Holistic agency!” he almost yelled into the speaker. “It’s the Dirk!”

Todd grinned and leaned backwards against the corridor walls. Few things were as enjoyable to watch as Dirk, delighted and buzzing with energy, about to dive into a new mystery. It took him a moment to realize that Farah was on the phone as well.

“Was it the electrical company again?” Todd asked when she hung up.

“No,” she said and went back to lock the office door. “It was a potential client, I think.”

“No way!” Todd was grinning again. “Finally.”

The key clicked in the lock, and Farah lead the way down the corridor and towards the stairs. From above them came the sounds of heavy thumps, fake laughing, and, occasionally, screams, the kinds of which you’d expect to hear from a person whose soul is being sucked out of their body through their skin pores. The office space upstairs hosted improvisation classes for amateur actors on weekday evenings.

“Who was it, specifically?” Todd asked while they were walking down the stairs.

“Just some guy.” She shrugged. “Sounded anxious. Described to me in detail all the “suspicious” things he’d seen this week, like, stray cats he didn’t recognize and misplaced leaves on his garden paths. Then offered 10 million dollars for finding the assassin that his girlfriend hired, apparently.”

“Ten million dollars?!”

“From the way he offered it,” Farah speculated, “I’m guessing he’s filthy rich.”

They’ve made their way out of the office building, through the community garden that surrounded it, and out by the back streets to their car, and all this time Dirk was still on the phone. He was still on the phone during the car ride, when they arrived at the restaurant, when Todd ordered the food for him (he knew the order by heart anyway), and when the waiter brought the food. He continued to talk through mouthfuls of pancake.

“Yes, professor Daly,” Dirk mumbled, wiping chocolate off his chin, “this is where I would start also. Yes indeed we can be there tomorrow! I’ll admit, we’ve had a few cases piling up, but for a sophisticated conundrum such as yours I am more than willing to push them further down the waiting list. Yes, we have our own transport. I am writing down the address now.”

He rummaged the pockets of his jacket for a pen, only found a sharpie instead, and proceeded to scribble down the address on a random piece of paper he found in the same pocket as the sharpie. It was Todd’s med prescription, luckily old and used.

“Got it,” he said, stuffing the paper back where it came from, and placing another piece of pancake into his mouth. “Oh, very much likewise! It was a tremendous pleasure talking to you, professor Daly. I am sincerely looking forward to meeting you in person tomorrow!”

And, adding two or three more words of genuine pleasantries, he finally ended the call.

“Oh.” Dirk blinked, as if coming out of a light dream. “We’ve left the office already?” He regarded his half-finished plate of pancakes with mild curiosity. 

“You weren’t lying to him, you know,” Todd said. “You really will have to push a case down the list for him.”

“Wait, seriously?” Farah raised an eyebrow at both of them, as in she raised both of her eyebrows, one eyebrow per person precisely. “We’ve just had ten million dollars waved in front of our faces and we will go for something else instead?” She paused, but no one spoke up. “Guys, come on. I know this is not at all about money, but ten million dollars! This could fund the agency for years to come. Whoever that was can wait.”

“He most certainly cannot,” Dirk dismissed it. “Out of the question. It’s a case that requires immediacy and all of my attention. There’s a music box missing! And the person who made it has also gone missing!”

“The other guy has some… he has… he has misplaced leaves…” Farah said, and sighed. “Look, we haven’t gotten paid in, well, ever,” Farah explained. “Lydia’s money is running out. Our medical insurance pay is ridiculous and repairing the office after the piano thing was a big expense.”

“Hey, guys,” Todd interrupted what was measuring up to be a passionate though pointless argument. “There’s three of us. Can’t we split the work?”

Dirk considered the notion for a few seconds.

“The other one, the one with lots of money. What does he want us to do, exactly?”

“He wasn’t very clear,” Farah replied. “He thinks he’s going to be assassinated so I guess he wants us to protect him?”

“Well, Farah’s a professional bodyguard,” Todd pointed out. “I’m sure she can handle it on her own. Especially if the guy’s just paranoid and there’s no real assassin.”

“That can work, actually.” Farah gave him a single nod of approval. “So I’ll deal with the imaginary assassin and Dirk can handle the professor with his whatever he lost.”

“What about you, Todd?” Dirk asked. “Do you want to come with me to the university and delve into the mystery of the missing music box,” he began with grandeur in his voice, “or go with Farah to the probably enormous fancy house of some Probably very rich dude to probably watch her apprehend an assassin in a cool badass way?” he concluded, thinking that the odds were obviously in his favour.

*

On the Saturday morning, Dirk arrived to the Cooltown University campus. Without Todd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is already written and needs editing so coming in a couple days :D  
> as always, great thanks to everyone who leaves kudos/comments, it is highly appreciated!


	4. chapter 4

Cooltown University existed to defy all expectations as it was neither particularly cool, nor did it reside in a town of any sort. 

History experts disagreed on the genesis of its name. Some thought it was a garbled up version of “coal town”, which made phonetic but not logical sense, since there were never any “coal towns” in a five hundred mile radius of the campus. Others believed it was a reference to some atmospheric anomaly which, indeed, would be quite cool, except there were no naturally occurring atmospheric anomalies on campus.

(Unless you counted that one time when the students made it rain in the physics department, presumably by accident.)

The reality was much simpler. The university was initially named after its founder, Francis Coleton, and changed two years later during state registration when someone misspelled it. 

Presumably by accident.

Cooltown resided in a geographically magical spot which was somehow equidistant in all directions from any significant human dwelling. It wasn’t known who had built it there; as far as the locals were considered, it randomly spawned into existence in 1923, and forever remained in obscurity, overshadowed by all other universities in the state.

Its original department was the department of English literature, followed promptly by the department of philosophy and ethics. It then began to accumulate funds and soon spilled over and spread out like a well-fed amoeba, eventually creating a whole academic buffet. 

Students of Cooltown could not boast a prestigious diploma, but adored their campus to the extent that few went home even for summer holidays. Every department had its Thing. Department of physics and applied maths had the best coffee, department of chemistry had the best food, and department of philosophy and ethics had the best place to smoke. 

It wasn’t clear why everyone had collectively decided that the department of philosophy and ethics had the best place to smoke; perhaps it was the presence of several large engraved signs announcing that smoking was prohibited everywhere on the campus premises. Students of philosophy and ethics loved to discuss the philosophical and ethical implications of such restrictions, typically while smoking.

  
Dirk had arrived on Cooltown campus on 9:25 AM on a Saturday. Todd and Farah were picked up by Kevin’s personal drivers, and Dirk was allowed to take the car. Dirk was rarely allowed to take the car - which was technically Farah’s - since he did not believe in any fundamental differences between driving a real car and mariokart. 

He was also banned from using the office popcorn machine unassisted, for complicated reasons.

Cooltown greeted Dirk with one of the pleasant weather configurations from its running catalog of weathers. The sun glazed the ground and sent sunbeams dancing on his skin, and the soft breeze brought the faint scent of blooming lilacs. He strolled across campus, not in a rush to get to professor Daly’s office. The man was expecting him by ten.

On his way to the department of physics and applied math Dirk had encountered several note-worthy sights. One of them was a pack of cats walking in an organized line behind the department of engineering. He considered investigating it further, but realized that it might take more than half hour. His grasp on the linear progression of time was slight and unreliable, and he preferred to aim for arriving much early, which allowed him to arrive only a few minutes late.

*

Alas, there was no mystery there to investigate. The cats were there because Lilly was there, and Lilly brought food. Always. Every day at 10 AM and 3PM exactly on the dot. And Lilly’s determination to enforce fair and equal food shares among the cats was such, that she single-handedly disproved all current theories of feline behaviour and had actually convinced cats to form orderly queues for food, which they were now in the process of doing.

*

Professor’s Daly office was just over a turn on the second floor, but he insisted on meeting Dirk in the lobby and walking him there personally. The internal structure of the institutes’s building was countlessly modified by its inhabitants, and, by virtue of its inhabitants being adept at utterly inhuman concepts such as Lobachevsky’s geometry and non-Euclidean planes, the structure had refused to make any sense at all.

Employees navigated it with ease. All students who still hadn’t learned to navigate it by second semester of their freshmen year would inevitably drop out, as this would demonstrate an inherent incompatibility of their brain with the kinds of ridiculous things people taught and researched there.

“And now to the left,” Professor Daly instructed, and opened the door for Dirk. “Like I’ve said, a bit hard to explain.”

Dirk had zoned out for the entirety of the walk, having been distracted by the slightly hypnotic pattern of floor tiles, so he appreciated the help.

“Please come in,” Professor invited, already taking a seat.

Professor’s Daly on-campus office was much tidier than his at-home office, but what it gained in organization, it lacked in free space. You could hardly walk in there at all; the best you could go for is a slow waddle, and in some places only a cautious squeeze in between bookcases would suffice.

This has not stopped Dirk from skillfully surfing the tight maze of abandoned blackboards and book stacks in order to arrive at the other end of the professor’s desk.

“Well this is nice.” Dirk nodded. “Not as nice as my office but, you know, nice.” He smiled broadly, nodding some more for good measure. “So why are we here again instead of the place where you last saw the music box?”

“Oh I’ve searched my apartment left right and center!” Professor Daly explained. “Not a dust spec there that I haven’t turned upside down. And my neighbor, Janice, helped too, thoroughly helped, we had tea twice, so I reckoned next best place to look is here.”

“Good thinking, professor!” Dirk exclaimed, jumping up from his seat as if an eel had just been teleported from the depths of the ocean right into the chair for the sole purpose of biting his ass. “I’ll start right away. You keep talking.”

And he launched himself at the nearest cabinet from which he began to remove all objects one by one, stacking them on the coffee table behind him.

“Talk, you ask?” professor repeated. “Talk about what?”

“Whatever suits you.” Dirk shrugged, struggling with a stuck tome of electrochemical analysis manual. “I find that when people talk in my presence, regardless of the subject, they tend to mention things that I require to solve the case. Don’t ask me how I know which things because I don’t. Know,” he explained. “It simply happens.”

“Very well,” professor agreed, and waited for himself to start talking.

“What you told me yesterday, over the phone, about Arthur’s disappearance,” Dirk prompted. “You said it was never investigated properly. Do you have any idea why?”

“Oh, sadly, I do.” Professor sighed. “See, he wasn’t young, Arthur. Neither am I, then or now.” He chuckled. “We were always complaining to each other, about getting old. And the last few months, Arthur, well, he seemed worse than usual. It was subtle, the students didn’t notice. I did. And then, last day he came to work, told me he was going to visit his family…” professor sighed again. “It’s like I knew he wasn’t coming back. I helped him pack, we had coffee together. I left. Didn’t even drive him to the train station next day.”

There was a pause, which would have been spent in profound silence if it wasn’t for Dirk trying (and failing) to stack and balance several mugs on top of each other.

“Do continue,” he urged, while catching the mugs mid-flight and plopping them back onto the table’s surface.

“Next, Arthur left,” professor said, “and didn’t return my calls, or emails, or anything of the sort. I called the police. They looked into it, then suddenly dropped the case. I demanded to know why, but only got the answer a month later, and not from the police.”

He paused again, and rubbed his wrinkled forehead, and in the faint sunlight breaching through the curtained window, he suddenly looked quite his age. 

“I knew he had family, see. A sister and a nephew, down south. Knew he didn’t get along with them much either, never met them, never even saw any photos of them in his room. They didn’t like me, too, I think,” he added. “Or didn’t like how close I was with Arthur. Thought we were a couple, I bet. Thought that was a sin or some such.”

“Were you?” Dirk asked nonchalantly while rummaging through some cardboard boxes in the corner. “A couple, I mean?”

“No-no.” Professor shook his head, smiling. “Not at all. Not that there’s any things wrong with that though, quite. Quite the opposite,” he assured Dirk.

Professor Daly could not keep up with all the new flags that kids these days would come up with, so he had assumed that the coloured stripes on the side of Dirk’s black leather jacket meant that he was queer. Incidentally, professor was right about Dirk being queer. But it had nothing to do with the coloured stripes.

“You were just friends then,” Dirk suggested.

“There was nothing ‘just’ about our friendship, my dear fella,” professor replied. “Arthur and I, well.” He considered whether to elaborate on that for a moment, then decided that the coloured stripes also meant that he could. “I was never quite like other people, see. Never got married, never dated anyone. Never wanted to date, or any such thing, anything close. I didn’t have a wife, but I had Arthur. We’ve known each other fifty years, lived together, on and off, for forty of those. Went through everything together. He was my person, Arthur. He was everything.”

Another pause, this time silent at last, descended onto the room. Dirk sat on the floor, surrounded by piles and boxes and hoards of things, lost in thoughts. Expressing sympathy was hard; but he sure felt it twofold.

“What happened?” Dirk asked, softly.

“A month after he left,” professor spoke again, “I got a letter in the mail, from Arthur’s sister. Said he passed away at their place. Said they wanted nothing to do with me, didn’t want me at his funeral. I had no ways of testing that, but I couldn’t exactly go tracking them down, demanding to know everything… To this day, I still don’t know where he’s buried. I just bring flowers to his memorial at this institute. Every year.”

Professor Daly had nothing more to say. His head dropped slightly, eyes fixated on the dusty floor, and his hands rubbed the edges of his armchair. He only looked up when he realized that Dirk was standing by his side.

“Professor…” Dirk began. “Roger, may I call you Roger?” The man nodded, and Dirk dragged a chair closer to take a seat. “I am very sorry,” Dirk said. “I cannot bring Arthur back, but I promise that I will do everything in my power to find this music box of yours.”

He smiled gingerly at the professor, and the professor smiled warmly back.

The tender moment was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by the opening of said door with enough force to send it slamming against the wall with a strangely metallic jingle.

“Hey, Roger!” a high-pitched, melodic voice announced. “Do you have like a tall hat of some sort? Oh. You didn’t tell me you were expecting guests.”

On the threshold of professor Daly’s office stood a tall, lanky, round-cheeked girl of not older than twenty. On her she had a pair of buggy jeans and an over-sized sweater, both of which had faint grease and dirt stains. She also had a heavy-looking batch of keys hanging down from her neck on a string.

“Good morning to you too, Lilly,” Roger said. “I don’t have hats of any sort.”

“Pity,” she responded. “Mathys club’s on and Donna is doing magic tricks. Guess she’ll have to do with one of my buckets.”

Lilly’s official job title was “cleaner lady”, but in effect she did everything from helping professors with powerpoint projectors to making sure that every classroom had enough chalk. She also had a knack for fixing things, which started from her repairing the lounge room coffee machine and ended with people bringing their gadgets and kitchen appliances for Lilly to look at.

People joked that Lilly was the department’s guardian spirit. One time when she was sick with the flu for two weeks, the institute had descended into such utter chaos that the university’s dean had to come over and take a look. The dean didn’t fix one thing, however. But Lilly did, as soon as she came back.

“Do you like magic tricks?” Dirk asked instead of a hello or an introduction, and proceeded to conjure several wrapped candies from his own left ear. 

Unfortunately, Dirk was not very good at magic tricks, so the candies also fell in abundance from the sleeve of his leather jacket.

“I don’t.” Lilly grinned from ear to ear. “Magic tricks fail to meaningfully address the neurological presuppositions of the very same phenomenon they rely upon,” she added with the same broad smile. I’m Lilly,” she then said, approaching Dirk and extending a smudge-covered palm. “I work here.”

“Dirk Gently,” he responded, shaking her hand with enthusiasm. “Holistic detective.”

“Would you two like some tea or coffee?” Roger offered, already getting up and opening the cupboard on his right. “I know you’re both busy but it will only take a jiffy. I was going to tell you more about Arthur.”

“Oh.” Lilly’s smile disappeared. “I, uh, I have a sinister puddle to mop up on floor three. Sorry. Catch up later though, yeah? I need help with the crossword from Friday.”

“Send me a text when you’ll be free,” Roger replied. “I might not be here.”

“Sure.” She nodded. “Toddles!” And left.

“She seemed…” Strange, Dirk wanted to say, but realized how that would sound coming from him of all people, and said ‘nice’ instead. “Is she your friend?”

“Just a friend, yes,” Roger replied. “Tea or coffee then?”

  
Tea was brewed and tea was enjoyed, and Dirk sat across from Roger, listening to stories of Arthur’s long and fascinating life. He learned about their camping trips, and Arthur’s tinkering successes, and about all the insane and, occasionally, near lethal laboratory accidents. By Saturday noon, Dirk felt like he had known Arthur too. 

“Gracious me!” Roger exclaimed, glancing at his wrist watch. “I have student hours at half past. Twenty years I’ve had the same hours and I keep forgetting.”

“Should I wait for you?” Dirk asked.

“If you can, yes.” He hurried to make at least an approximate attempt at tidying up the place. “We can go back to searching after.”

“Oh, one last thing,” Dirk said, raising his arm like a diligent student, “I saw some cats on my way to the institute. Do you know of any cats acting strangely around here?”

“Is it important?” professor Daly asked, still not entirely accustomed to Dirk’s methods.

Dirk nodded with a slight corner-of-the-lips smile.

“There are cats.” Professor shrugged. “One of them, a black, fluffy fella, friendly, used to come to my lecture hall a lot, but I’m afraid I’ve violated its trust. Used one too many in a demonstration of Schroedinger’s superposition experiment. Without the actual poison, of course. Now I use a toy cat instead.”

“Nothing strange then?” Dirk repeated.

“Well how would I know.” Professor chuckled. “Isn’t it a common cat trait, to act in a strange ways?”

Dirk could not find it in himself to disagree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter coming in a few days
> 
> also, a word of gratitude goes to the campus of *my* university for providing inspiration for Cooltown quirks and lore; i miss you, campus! one day the pandemic will end and we shall be reunited


	5. chapter 5

Kevin McDougall wasn’t feeling particularly anxious and that was giving him anxiety.

He sat near the enormous windows of his guest coffee room, mixing his decaf cappuccino in a monotonous clockwise manner, eyes transfixed, unblinking, on a fly that was patrolling the windowpane. He had started mixing the drink two minutes ago and had not stopped mixing it as of yet.

“How long has it been since he last said anything?” Todd asked.

Farah made a vague hand gesture that translated roughly to “longer than I would have preferred”. 

“Mr. McDougall?” she attempted.

The silence that followed was so profound, one could almost hear the fly take cautious steps across the windowsill on a brave and borderline suicidal mission to reach the half-finished biscuit on Kevin’s plate and give it a generous lick.

Todd sighed and decided to make himself and Farah some coffee. Kevin hadn’t offered, or, indeed, given any indication that he would be willing to offer at some point in the future, but somehow Todd had figured that he wouldn’t mind. Or notice.

“This machine has more buttons than a typewriter,” Todd muttered, examining the device that Kevin used when they first came in. “What do you press to get like a normal cup of coffee?”

“Let me.” Farah pushed him aside gently, then paused. “Right,” she said, squinting at the thing like one regards a child’s drawing while trying to make sense of what is drawn, what was meant to be drawn, and how to compliment it in a way that a child will understand.

“I’ll get the mugs,” Todd said, and reached for the cabinet filled with dozens of delicate porcelain cups.

“Aha!” Meanwhile, Kevin had chosen this moment precisely to jump up from his chair, nearly spluttering his coffee in the process. “There’s a squirrel in the backyard!”

Farah gave Todd a meaningful look and went to check. Upon reaching the window, she discovered that there really was a squirrel under a massive oak tree that grew in backyard number four.

“It’s up to no good, I can tell,” Kevin explained, trying to incinerate the poor creature with his gaze. “Investigate it!”

“Mr McDougall, sir,” Farah said. “You’re paying us a very big salary so technically I would be willing to investigate a squirrel, but please, look into your heart and ask yourself, is that really the best use of our resources?”

The man looked almost on the verge of tears.

“I swear I am not insane,” he responded. “Listen,” he said, breathing heavily. “I’m not stupid, okay? I went to Harvard. I write articles about fine arts for the Metropolitan journal. I donate to STEM research. I don’t actually believe in all that voodoo nonsense crap! And…”

“Mr McDougall,” Farah tried, but he wasn’t finished.

“And I’m not usually paranoid either!” he yelled, and Todd had to look away to hide the expression of utter bemusement and slight concern on his face. “I have a psychotherapist. I see him regularly. Also!” he said, and did something that Farah and Todd weren’t expecting even after the passionate tirade - took off his half-buttoned shirt, and then the t-shirt underneath to reveal a hairless chest with a several inch long red scar running in between his ribs. 

“I have a heart condition.” He pointed in the general direction of the scar. “I’ve had open heart surgery twice. I’m on beta-blockers,” he almost whispered. “I should be calmer than an elephant, so, why am I so freaking anxious all the damn time?!” he screamed, and covered his face by the lump of his clothes.

Todd approached him, awkwardly, and made an even more awkward attempt at placing his palm on the man’s naked shoulder, but changed his ming last second.

“It’s okay,” Todd said. “We believe you.”

“You do?” Kevin mumbled, removing just the edge of lump of shirts that was obscuring his vision to see Todd’s face and scan it for sincerity.

“Yeah.” Todd nodded. “I, uh,” he wanted to mention pararibulitis, but decided that would be even more personal than patting a half-naked man on the back, “well, I’ve seen things way weirder than invisible assassins. If you say someone’s watching you, someone’s watching you.”

“How and when does it happen, exactly?” Farah asked helpfully. “The feeling of being watched.”

“Every day,” Kevin said, now actually approaching calmness. “At the same time. Every. Day.” He took a deep breath in and put his t-shirt back on to the relief of Todd, who had caught himself staring at the outline of the man’s abs and had to push away a thought of such kind for the third time that week. “Starts at 9 AM. Ends at 5 PM.”

“Can you feel it now?” Farah continued.

“No.” He shook his head in confusion. “Maybe I’m in the wrong room? Come, I’ll go to the rooms where I usually am.”

What followed was a half an hour long sequence of the three of them going from room to room and standing there in silence for about five minutes, after which Kevin would declare that he can’t feel a thing and they would move on to the next one.

“I give up,” he proclaimed after his list of potential hotspots had been exhausted. “Did I make this up? Am I actually going mad?” And he sat down on the floor, hugging his knees.

“Listen, uh, Kevin,” Todd said, sitting down near him. “Can I call you Kevin?” The man didn’t reply. “Your house, it’s a bit big, if I’m being honest. Hard to keep an eye on everything in here. Maybe it would help if you moved to a smaller, less, well, visible place?”

“Are you inviting me to stay over with you?” Kevin blinked.

That is not what Todd was doing, but now Kevin could not be stopped.

“Where do you live?” He looked at Farah with round puppy eyes of a man who was desperate enough to live in a barn by now, though his understanding of what a barn looked like was limited to his childhood memories of nativity plays.

“Washington street,” Farah replied before she could process the question.

“Excellent!” Kevin was on his feet again. “That’s even closer to my tower than this place!”

“Tower,” Todd repeated. “He has a… tower.”

“He means the office building of his company,” Farah explained.

“I will go pack at once,” Kevin announced. “Guard me please,” he commanded.

Farah rolled her eyes but followed him out of the room.

“I did not sign up for a crazy billionaire to be living with us.,” Todd muttered under his nose, and went to follow Farah as well.

*

The reason Kevin’s feeling of being watched did not activate that morning was simple - Orson had overslept. He rolled around in his hostel bed, smiling sweetly in his sleep. He was dreaming of a puppy licking his feet. In the waking world, his feet were dangling off the too short for him bed and touching the stone-cold floor.

Orson’s alarm clock did not go off because his phone had developed a glitch and suddenly decided that it belonged to an exhausted, terminally sleep deprived man who should be left to sleep for as long as he wants to - so it turned off the alarm clock and put itself into airplane mode for good measure. By the time Orson had woken up naturally, Kevin was already sitting in the passenger seat of his car, on his way to Farah’s apartment.

*

The car circled around the apartment block for fifteen minutes, trying to find a parking spot that Kevin’s driver deemed satisfactory. When they had parked at last, Kevin tried to persuade the driver to step outside first and check the premises for suspicious activity. The driver reminded that he was a driver, not a bodyguard, and Farah produced the most exasperated sigh that Todd had ever heard from her. She climbed over his seat, stepped out, and circled the building two more times on foot to “check the premises”.

The elevator in the building was perpetually broken, and Todd was given the honor of dragging half of Kevin’s suitcases up the stairs to the fifth floor. ‘Did he stash all of his gold into his socks, or am I out of shape?’, Todd wondered. 

In reality, it was neither. Todd was actually quite in shape as the result of all the running around that he did on their cases, mostly to catch up with Dirk and Farah. And Kevin had no gold stashes; what he took with him, and what was giving Todd so much trouble, was a suitcase full of all the fancy food ingredients that Kevin had in his fridge. Were he to leave them in his house, they would inevitably expire.

“This one.” Farah pointed when they climbed all the way to the fifth floor. She fit the key into the lock with her right hand and held the door by the handle with her left. It was slightly wobbly and well overdue for maintenance. “Take off your shoes,” she told Kevin after stepping in and taking her own shoes as well.

“Why, have you got high quality carpets?” Kevin asked.

“No?” Farah raised an eyebrow at him. “Your shoes are dirty and I don’t want to wash the floor.”

“There’s no spare bedroom,” Todd said, dragging in the suitcase and locking the door behind him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

“That’s okay,” Kevin replied. “I’ve had worse.”

Kevin was lying. He had never slept on a couch before and believed that 31 was a tad late to start sleeping on couches, so he wasn’t particularly enthused about it.

“I’m not completely useless, you know,” he said, opening the suitcase. “I can cook lunch! I’m good at cooking,” he explained, extracting a jar of authentic Italian pesto sauce from the suitcase.

“All the dishes are dirty,” Farah told him.

“I’ll load the dishwasher,” he suggested. “See, I know how to do that too!”

“I don’t have a dishwasher,” Farah said.

“You don’t have a dishwasher?” Kevin seemed genuinely confused. “Then how do your dishes get clean?”

Farah blinked. Todd suppressed a laugh. Kevin had just realized that he was in for an interesting and educating stay.

*

By the time Orson reached the mansion premises at last, Kevin’s personal driver was standing outside, having just returned the car to the underground parking facility.

“Oh, hi Orson!” he greeted cheerily. “How are the birds today?”

Orson had told the locals that he was a professional bird scientist (he didn’t know the word ‘ornithologist’ so he used the term ‘bird scientist’) and that he was conducting field observations on a species of birds that was incredibly rare and going extinct and could be found there in the village of all places.

“No idea,” Orson responded. “I’ve only gotten here. Overslept.”

“Happens to everyone sometimes,” the driver assured him.

“How’s Anne?” Orson asked. “Is her hip any better?”

“A bit.” The driver nodded. 

“I need to remember to return this to Mrs Sanchez,” Orson said, extracting an empty tupperware from his backpack. “She gave me sandwiches on Thursday, I keep forgetting to give it back.”

“I think she’s at home,” the driver said. “Well, uhm, good luck with the birds. I’m going home. Got relieved of duty early.”

“Really? How so?”

“Hell knows.” The driver shrugged. “Drove McDougall to some shabby apartment, with three suitcases and two new private detectives of his. It’s down at Washington’s,” he added. “Got stuck in traffic at M2, stood at one red light for a whole lifetime.”

“Washington’s?” Orson repeated. “Is it close to that new seafood restaurant?”

“That’s the one,” the driver confirmed. 

“Have you been there with Anne?”

“Can’t. I’m allergic to seafood.”

“Well, maybe they have, well, good, uh,” Orson stuttered, “good bread sticks?”

There was an awkward pause of such volume and depth, you could probably stuff it like a bell pepper if you had the skill for it.

“I better return this to Mrs Sanchez,” Orson blurted out and left without saying goodbye.

“Change of locations then,” Orson thought on his way to Mrs Sancez’s house, and got out his malfunctioning smartphone to check the bus routes to Washington street. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> starting from this chapter, I will be posting once a week every week, to keep it more consistent for you and more manageable for myself - however, if circumstance will allow for it, i might switch to twice a week at some point
> 
> as always, thank you all *so much* for kudos and comments!


	6. Chapter 6

The institute of physics and applied maths was having a fairly average Saturday afternoon, provided that you didn’t consider it the very epicenter of a complex web of peculiar inter-connected occurrences, which it was. 

Undergraduates were starting to swarm on the lawn outside. This was their natural time and place to swarm, which they would do with the goal of revising a subject or two, but would typically lead to drinking beer and exchanging gossip instead. 

On the ground floor of the institute, the Mathys Club of Recreational Mathematics for Gifted Children of All Ages had just been dismissed. It was dismissed early following an accident with a small family of rabbits. Four of the rabbits were subsequently captured, but one had escaped through the opened window to the utter delight of children of all ages, and set off on an exciting free life during which it produced twenty nine children and was eventually eaten by a fox seven years later.

The rabbit, all things considered, thought this a relatively happy ending.

On the third floor, the sinister puddle had been identified as congealed energy drink spilled by a grad student on her way to a library. Lilly mopped up the puddle, changed the light bulb in professor Smith’s office even before he asked, and watered professor Hardell’s plants, because she did ask.

On the second floor, Dirk had wandered off from professor Daly’s office and had gotten hopelessly lost within the first five minutes. He meandered across the corridors for a while, until he somehow ended up in a large empty hall at the other end of the building. There he discovered the institutes’s mini-museum of severely outdated electronics, and was now exploring its contents.

  
If any other person of Dirk’s age were to find themselves in this place, they would have been awash with nostalgia at once. The museum was full of such ancient artifacts as VHS players, Walkmans, bulky IBM computers and Atari gaming consoles. But to Dirk, this was all abstract. He spent his late childhood and teenage years under lock and key with no access to any such technology; the only entertainment Black Wing was willing to provide were books, mostly classic English literature books. And that’s what Dirk had known.

There was, however, just one thing that succeeded at jolting his memory. He picked it up gingerly from its resting place and rotated it in his fingers. What Dirk had in his hands was a portable Tetris, a thick, rather inelegant piece of technology with bright yellow buttons and a dull glossy display. Dirk has had one just like it, once. A long time ago, in another life.

He put the Tetris down and stepped aside. In his mind, faint, cotton-light memories stirred. They brought a bittersweet sorrow, a misplaced longing that echoed a mellow ache behind his sternum. 

He barely remembered his birthplace, having been brought over to Great Britain at the age of five. What remained in his brain were ghosts: the bleak Belgrad winter, the crunch of snow under his feet, the smell of fresh linoleum in the tiny kitchen of their tiny apartment, the taste of Domačica cookies… 

He had no place left, there. No house. No family. Even Yugoslavia itself was gone from the map. England was hardly a home either, and he was even more of a foreigner here in America. So where did he belong?

Dirk stood in some other empty space without a clue of how he arrived there when he was discovered by Lilly, sitting on the floor in a corner and playing Candy Crush on his phone. 

Candy Crush had an uncanny ability to calm him down and take his mind off things and only came with the downside of being viciously addictive at times.

“Hello again, holistic detective,” she greeted, passing him by with a plastic bucket in her grasp. “Is Roger still doing someone’s homework for them?”

“Don’t know,” Dirk replied, and got up. “How is the puddle then?”

“Dealt with.” She beamed. “I need to fix a printer now. Paper jam.”

She was about to move on with her work, but Dirk stopped her.

“Did you know Arthur?” he asked, and saw Lilly’s face lose its expression of bubbly happiness.

“No,” she replied. “When he died, I was,” she coughed, “uh, young. Too young. In high school. But Roger talks about him a lot.”

“Why aren’t you a student here?” Dirk continued.

Lilly laughed out loud in reply. “Do you have five hundred pounds of money stashed in your mattress?” She chuckled some more. “I’m not fancy like those kids.” She discretely pointed to a group of Cooltown students that were swarming at the stairs in the distance. “And they know I’m not like them, too, they hate me.” She snorted.

“Hate you?” Dirk frowned.

“Hate might be a strong word, fine,” she said. “They exclude me from the boundaries of their social structure. They do not categorize me but refuse to consider me an element. I am but a surplus person unit outside their highly codified and symbolic web.” She scratched her nose thoughtfully. “I don’t,” her hand moved in the air as she searcher for the right word, “vibe check with them. Did that clarify?”

Dirk nodded with the confidence of someone who did not understand any of the last four sentences but did not want any further clarifications either.

“Anyway, I better go,” Lilly said. “Time’s running faster in my legs than in my head, completely against special relativity by the way, so I should get to work before I desynchronize. Farewell kind sir!” she told him, and promptly left.

  
When Dirk was passing by the swarming undergrads on his way back to the second floor, they regarded him with curiosity and distrust.

“Dude,” one of the students said. “Don’t talk to the cleaner girl. You’re validating her delusion.”

“Delusion?” Dirk repeated.

“Yeah.” Another undergrad snorted with laughter. “The delusion of being worth talking to.”

“She’s clinically idiotic,” a third student added, but Dirk did not listen, reply, or as much as look at any of them as he pushed past the crowd and down the staircase.

In his experience, the best way of interacting with bullies was to not.

*

Dirk got to Roger’s office just in time to see him walk out side by side with a sickly-pale young man, who was holding a jar of homemade orange marmalade in his thin, spider-like fingers.

“Remember,” Roger instructed the man. “Tell Sophie the truth. Tell her how you feel, and respect whichever answer she will give you, okay?”

“Okay, professor,” the man replied.

He wasn’t exactly helped by the advice, but he wasn’t harmed either, and as far as conversations with elderly professors went, he considered it a success.

“Students come to me with all sorts of problems,” professor Daly explained, even though Dirk hadn’t asked. “And I am happy to help regardless.”

“Quite,” Dirk said into the ether.

He hadn’t yet managed to shake off the dreamy state of mind that he had found himself in earlier.

“Should we continue with the search?” Roger asked. “Oh, but we must have some tea first. Or maybe coffee is better.”

And he invited Dirk back into his office, which seemed somehow even smaller than before, and now carried a faint presence of earl grey and oranges.

*

The continued search efforts did not yield any meaningful results. They did discovered things that the professor had forgotten were there, that he hadn’t even known were there, and that he hadn’t a suggestions as to how they could have possibly ended up there - but not what they were looking for.

They sat on the floor surrounded by copious amounts of all manners of useless and not-so-useless things and took turns at producing distraught sighs. Theirs were the sighs one would typically produce after completing an inhuman amount of hard, tedious work that felt grand and absolutely crucial but in fact amounted to no human value at all, such as approximately three quarters of all undergraduate dissertations. 

“Nothing,” professor Daly declared, and sighed.

He then waited politely for Dirk’s turn to sigh, but was surprised to see the detective up on his feet again. 

“This is a defeat, professor,” he said, channeling his motivated and inspirational voice. “But we must not let this defeat define us. We must resist the forces of failure and swim boldly against the stream of discouragement. The universe will aid our efforts if we show it that we are diligent, able, and unwavering in the face of disaster,” he concluded, mildly satisfied with the speech.

“There is one more place we could look,” professor replied, getting up from the floor as well. “Our old summer house. I haven’t been there months, but now that I’ve said it, I don’t believe I have seen the music box in months either. I just keep it safe, see.”

“Then it is decided.” Dirk beamed. “We shall search the summer house! Are you free tomorrow?”

“Only in the afternoon.”

“That suits me. Great work today,” Dirk congratulated the professor and himself as well. “Text me your address, I will pick you up in my car.”

It was Farah’s car, but the details didn’t matter.

  
On his way to the aforementioned car, Dirk was surprised to discover that he still had charge left in his phone, and that the phone was ringing.

“Hey,” said the phone when he answered it.

“Hey, Todd,” said Dirk.

It was Todd.

“How is your case going?” asked Todd, who was on the other end of the phone.

“I have made certain progress in finding the lost object,” Dirk responded, “by identifying the locations in which the object is not found. We didn’t find it,” he explained. “But we haven’t checked everywhere yet. How is the probably rich guy?”

“Very rich,” Todd said. “And annoying,” he added quietly, covering his mouth with his hand.

Though that was probably overkill, seeing that Kevin was currently busy stirring pasta vigorously and saying something in Farah’s direction about Botticelli, and therefore was fairly oblivious to whatever Todd was talking about.

“He has opinions about everything,” Todd continued to explain. “And he is always chewing gum, very loudly, and changing it every ten minutes. I swear he’s gone through three packs already.”

“Are you staying with him to guard him at all times?” Dirk asked.

“No, actually he’s staying with us.”

“Right. Okay. No, wait a second,” Dirk said. “Not okay. He’s staying with ‘us’? What do you mean, ‘us’?”

“Shit,” Todd muttered, now covering the phone instead of his mouth. “Shit! Stupid.”

“Todd!” Dirk demanded in a stern voice. “Are you and Farah dating again?” He had pronounced the word “dating” with the intonation usually reserved for names of venereal diseases.

  
Todd and Farah were, indeed, dating again. It was their fifth attempt at dating in the last six months, and so far it had lasted almost a week, which was one day longer already than the previous attempt. They were planning to keep it secret for a little while, in case the problem of telling Dirk would resolve itself naturally, which, in effect, it just did.

  
“So what if we are dating?” Todd responded, deciding that the best mode of defense was a direct attack.

“Oh but not again!” Dirk was not satisfied with this explanation. “You and Farah dating never ends well, and I know because I’ve seen it four times before! I’ve only just recovered from the last time.”

  
There was much to recover from, since the pattern of Todd and Farah dating was such:

In the beginning, it always seemed like a great idea. They were, after all, close friends, who undeniably had a fair amount of attraction for each other, and had great difficulty socializing outside of their job. Unfortunately, thinking it was a great idea was the peak of the relationship. For a week, maybe two weeks, maybe even three weeks if the stars and planets aligned themselves appropriately, things would be okay. Then a horrendous break up would inevitably occur, forcing them to not speak to each other for a week, or maybe two weeks, or maybe even three weeks if the break up was horrendous enough.

Eventually things would stabilize and they would return to being close friends, and all would be well until one of them would once again get the fatal idea of “hey, why aren’t we dating?”.

Understandably, this was all quite upsetting for Dirk, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons was that Dirk was unhappily immune to the sudden idiopathic memory lapses that aided Todd and Farah in forgetting all horrible previous attempt at dating just as they were on the cusp of starting another one.

  
“You know Dirk,” Todd continued, still on the offense rather than defense, “it’s really not up to you whether Farah and I should be together because, because, we are Adults, and you’re not my mother, and even if you were my mother I would not want you deciding who I should or should not date, and, uh, yeah!” he concluded. “So stay out of it!”

Dirk had listened to this with a mix of incredulity and mild amusement.

“Anyway,” Todd said, “are you coming for breakfast tomorrow?”

“Yeah sure,” Dirk replied.

“Okay!”

“Have a good evening!”

“You too bye!”

And they both hang up at the same time.

On his last thirty feet of path towards the car, Dirk went through a handful of mental experiments and concluded that simply waiting for the break up to occur would probably take less time than trying to accelerate it. He unlocked the door, fell into the driver’s seat, and gave the Cooltown campus one last warm look.

Two individuals watched him attentively as he drove away towards the city. One of the individuals was Lilly. The other was a rather large, fluffy black cat that sat on the roof of a nearby utility shed and had a curious faint blue glow in its almond-shaped eyes.

*

Back in Todd and Farah’s apartment, Kevin had drained the pasta, added to it some oil, and set it aside.

“I need heavy cream for the Alfredo sauce,” he said, already digging through Farah’s fridge.

“It’s not in there,” Farah told him, but he ignored her and continued to search. 

Farah rolled her eyes. She had gotten some jolly good practice rolling her eyes since Kevin had moved in with them that morning. - Question. - She said. - Do you at least have a hunch for who is trying to kill you and why?

“Oh it’s probably my ex girlfriend,” Kevin replied confidently. “And I don’t know. For petty reasons, I think.”

“You think your ex girlfriend would organize your murder, for petty reasons,” Farah repeated.

“Yeah that’s about it,” Kevin agreed. “Do you have any heavy cream?”

“No.”

“Well why didn’t you tell me so!”

Farah rolled her eyes.

“You!” Kevin said at Todd, who had chosen this moment to walk into the kitchen. “We’re out of heavy cream. Go buy some.” 

And he produced a 50 dollar banknote from the back pocket of his jeans. It looked like it had been discarded by a feral raccoon after an unsuccessful attempt at washing it in a stream of water. 

“Is this enough? I think it should be enough.” He waved the banknote at Todd with urgency in his eyes. “Quick, or the pasta will get cold!”

Todd looked at the fifty dollar bill, then at Kevin, then at the fifty dollar bill again, and walked out of the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, a word of gratitude for my own uni campus for providing inspiration because our institute of applied math really does have a small museum of outdated tech and it's really great


	7. Chapter 7

In the beginning, there was no stuff. Then promptly after, though experts still argue about how and exactly when it happened, some stuff finally appeared. Most historians later agreed that the no stuff stage was the peak of existence and that it was largely downhill from then onward.

See, the very nature of stuff is such that it can only ever cause problems. 

When one does not have a Thing, or enough of a Thing, which happens often due to there typically being not enough of a thing to go around, suffering occurs. Indeed, most suffering of sentient beings can be attributed to not having a Thing or other, whether the Thing is some holy land, or oxygen, or a very pretty rock.

Yet paradoxically, it is very difficult to have exactly enough of a Thing, and having too much of a Thing can be even worse. Collections get completed, and immediately defeat their own purpose by being complete. Money stops bringing happiness after a while. And most addictive substances, even derived in the most technologically advanced of processes, will eventually reach a point at which no additional dose of it brings the same effect.

The only Thing that this doesn’t happen to is knowledge.

Individuals of academia - or any other field of dedicated and passionate people - are personally acquainted with this. As a child, you start with little information in your brain, but with a lot of wonder and unanswered questions. As you progress through the years of school, then undergraduate studies, then further into your degrees, you acquire stupendous amounts of information, but is somehow left with even more questions then you had begun with.

This is because your unknown unknowns are always greater than your known unknowns, and receiving an education, whether formal or informal, makes you aware of all the things you don’t have a clue about.

It also explains why those with the least knowledge are usually the ones most confident in their expertise: they simply do not know enough to realize just how wrong they are on every account.

  
Hugo Friedkin was aware of this as well.

Approximately four months ago, Friedkin fell through an inter-dimensional portal knowing very little. Then, in the span of about fourteen seconds, he was granted access to the total knowledge of everything that has ever happened in the history of the universe up until the present moment. This is when Friedkin realized just how much he haven’t known all his life, and also why most people he came in contact with have always been so frustrated with him.

He also became obsessed with knowledge at once. Suddenly, all the things he could never force himself to give a damn about became absolutely crucial for his well-being. Everything fascinated him. He craved to learn the plots of Ancient Greek plays, the anatomic structure of insect wings, the history of civilizations he had never even heard about before, and the recipe for a perfect apple crumble.

All of this he learned in the subsequent months; indeed, he had either learned or was in the process of learning basically everything, and could now answer almost any question you have about all that is and all that ever was before. 

  
Yet the greatest educational process in the history of education did very little to change Friedkin fundamentally. One should never confuse being knowledgeable for being intelligent or wise.

One thing he struggled with was making sense of all his knowledge. It is sadly not enough to have all the dots, you have to also connect them in a meaningful manner, and Friedkin could connect fuck-all. So, despite knowing more than any scientist could ever hope to record or remember, Friedkin was yet to propose any new scientific hypothesis. He followed all manners of scientific journals - from all fields - with fervent admiration, but he could hardly judge their validity.

He wasn’t so sure what to do with all his knowledge either. The what and the why are quite different questions, and creative problem-solving requires more than just raw data. Because of this, Friedkin had astonishingly interesting opinions of many things, but was not able to figure out how to leave the backstage of reality despite, theoretically, having enough information to eventually figure it out.

So instead of leaving, Friedkin made the backstage his home. He spent his time taking care of imaginary potted plants, conversing with imaginary people, and watching the universe go by on its business. He was currently very excited because, after a whole month of having to watch life evolve on the planet Vervinicus Zeta and following the presidential elections on Galgafon 7, he finally had something better to pay attention to.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

“This professor is shady, kinda,” said Friedkin, lounging in an imaginary chair in his imaginary world-viewing cinema. “I bet he’s hiding something.”

“But we like the professor,” said the other Friedkin and pouted.

There were any number of imaginary people that Friedkin could conceivably imagine talking to, but after a tedious round of trial and error three months ago, he had concluded that talking to himself was the one option that made him feel the least insane. After all, if talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, then which sign of madness is it to talk to other people who aren’t there?

“I think the billionaire is not telling the whole truth either,” said yet another Friedkin to Friedkin number one and Friedkin number two.

They nodded in agreement.

All of the Friedkins didn’t need to think or speculate since they knew exactly what has happened so far - and a little of what was likely to happen in the future - but were pretending not to. It is very hard to maintain a conversation with someone who knows everything that you know, and when you yourself know basically everything. 

“The Lilly girl is interesting,” Friedkin continued. “Didn’t she seem worried any time Dirk asked her about the dead guy?”

“She seemed awkward and worried,” another Friedkin confirmed.

“And there’s a cat!” Friedkin number three pointed out. “Do you think it’s connected?”

“It’s always connected,” said the original Friedkin, and the others gave him impressed looks.

“They will figure everything out,” one of the Friedkins said with confidence. “Can’t wait for the fun part when Dirk will explain it all!”

All other Friedkins agreed with this. He began to quite like Dirk, ever since he didn’t shoot him that one time.

“Hey, what about that Brotzman girl and her psychic vampires?” asked Friedkin to Friedkin and Friedkin. “I haven’t checked up on them for a while.”

“I really haven’t,” Friedkin agreed. “Let’s check up on the vampires in the cool van!”

And, sipping some of his imaginary cocktail, he switched the buttons on the remote of his completely real universe TV. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy, seven chapters in and i haven't even introduced like half the plotlines and about a third of the characters... stick with me people, we're doing this Douglas Adams style, tangents and strange turns and all
> 
> and thank you very much for continued support! it means *a lot*. i don't reply to every comment cause my social communication abilities aren't the sharpest so i don't always know what to say, but remember that *every* comment and kudos and social media share is highly appreciated and keeps me going through the hell of 2020


	8. Chapter 8

They were all alone on the road when the day had made a rather abrupt decision to end.

Just a few minutes ago it burned deep and bright, gold and crimson above the dusty asphalt, then it consulted its watch and figured that it was way overdue for a break. 

A low, hot wind picked up the sand and blew it into the windshield of the van. Far ahead, light lingered over the horizon as they pulled over and stepped outside to bask in the last rays of the dying sunlight. The sky hanged heavy above them, clouds floating over their heads like cheap halloween decorations, pink and white and silver.

The air felt static and dense. The empty valley fell into a gaudy veil of dusk, and the dessicated ground cracked under Amanda’s feet. There was one last flash of light through the clouds, an almost instant drop of temperature, and nothing.

The sun had set.

“Are you feelin’ it, drummer?” Martin asked, and closed the van’s doors, but didn’t lock them.

“It’s closer.” Amanda nodded, kicking a stone under her foot. “Which is interesting, considering we are literally in the middle of nowhere.”

Indeed, all around them was nothing but the road, and the sand surrounding it; a small hill there, a weirdly-shaped plant here, a bog standard Californian desert.

“You point, I drive.” Martin shrugged.

“If we’re here,” Gripps said, “might as well take a look. Flex our feet.”

“Admire the view,” agreed Cross.

“Punch a cactus!” suggested Vogel helpfully.

Beast reacted strongly to the last proposition. She signed something incoherent and ventured out on a search for a strong punch-worthy candidate.

“Fine,” Amanda gave in. “Let’s go for a walk in a desert at night hoping that I get another vision.”

They had spent the last few months driving across the Americas, six persons in a van with no goal in mind, lead by Amanda’s Hunches. She didn’t come back the same from Wendimoor; this became apparent a few days after she parted ways with Dirk, Todd and Farah.

Whatever power of prophecy she had before, now she had double. It’s like the keyhole she was peering through before had been widened to a window. 

Strange tales, narratives in picture came to her in dreams. They would wake her up in the middle of the night, gasping and shaking as the van rolled smoothly across empty roads, head full of tiny shreds of existence, puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together in the slightest.

She didn’t need pararibulitis attacks to have visions anymore, she could summon them at will. It was excruciatingly difficult at first, but now required no more than half an hour of concentration. They were still fast and flashy, far too jumbled up to make any sense of them, but they followed a pattern. 

And the current pattern was: death. Death and decay and destruction of all, reality falling apart and cracking like this very desert soil, shattering into dust with no chance of putting it back together again.

It wasn’t coming fast, but it was coming. And as far as she was concerned, she was the only one who was aware of it, and that made her responsible for figuring it out and doing something about it.

Not that she knew what one could possibly do about it. All that she was capable of was tracing the pieces from one vision to another, following a hair-thin thread of images that she saw more than once. 

She was in charge now. She was the boss. And she hated it - even when she got the final word on where to stop for dinner - but she had no other choice.

So they had spent the last few months going where her intuition was telling her to go, every subsequent vision leading her to the subsequent location.

This time, it lead her to the outskirts of the Death Valley. She found that rather fitting.

The Rowdy Three set out and spread out across the desert like a pack of house cats that have found a crack in the fence and were drunk on freedom but stepped cautiously all the same. Gripps and Cross had discovered a discarded shoe that served as a home to small family of gerbils, and Martin traced a line of steps that were probably left by a coyote. 

Vogel had a target picked out of him by Beast and was now hacking at the dried out cactus with his golf club, a maniacal glee in his eyes. Beast jumped up and down, switching from signed curses to epithets of excitement in her native language.

Despite having a seemingly perfect understanding of English, Beast preferred signs to words, and communicated mostly in a mix of made-up sign language and gestures. It was a bit of a learning curve for the Rowdy 3, but they managed.

Amanda’s feet brought her somewhere less than remarkable. A shoulder-tall hill, more of a lump of soil than a proper part of landscape, sticking out from the ground far from the road. Amanda circled it. This didn’t make the hill any more interesting. She poked at it with her boot, but this too produced no effect. She sat down near it, frustrated and cross at her own mind. Her mind was telling her that the hill was important, but conveniently forgot to elaborate in which manner it was important, leaving her even more cross and frustrated, and now with sand in her jeans.

She dropped backward, expecting to fall into the sand - and felt the back of her skull collide with a solid wall of metal.

*

Vogel and Beast were on the verge of destroying every dead cactus in a two mile radius when Amanda called out and they rushed for help.

Martin was there first, followed by Cross and Gripps. They caught Amanda on her knees, digging desperately through the sand with her bare hands. Without even attempting to ask for an explanation, they all joined in, and soon six pairs of hands were digging, nails hitting metal.

Less than ten minutes later, a door was uncovered. A door in a solid cylinder of metal sticking out of the ground, covered, evidently on purpose, by a layer of desert sand. Were you to find yourself nearby, unexpectedly out of petrol or with a flat tire, you would never have found it, probably because you wouldn’t even know to look in the first place.

But Amanda did know to look. And now they were standing in front of a metal door, cut into a metal cylinder, in the middle of a Californian wasteland.

She scratched at the door until her nails found the outline of some button, which, upon pushing, turned out to be a kind of a door handle. She pushed it further, then pulled. The door opened.

“Guys,” Amanda said, “we’re gonna go in, so, can you please not smash things? I know it’s fun but after that time in Walmart, I would kind of rather not fish for mug shards in my underwear. Just like, ask before you smash, okay?”

They all nodded in agreement.

“Right.” She took a flashlight out of her backpack and shone the light inside of what appeared to be an antique elevator. “Let’s get ourselves stuck in another dark hole.”

*

Six figures stepped into the dim space of the elevator, and six walked out a mile down, blinking, staring wide-eyed in all directions. They had found themselves in a sort of a man-made cave, about the size of a football stadium, with a ceiling that started tall at the entrance but ran into the floor at a steep incline at the opposite end.

It was bathed in an oily orange light that came from grimy lamps, the likes of which you’d expect to find in a vintage horror movie version of Frankenstein. The air felt stiff and stale. It left a taste of mold in your mouth and made you ever so slightly concerned about oxygen levels. 

The floor was littered with wood shavings and packing peanuts, so it was impossible to walk across it without producing a meaty crunch. In some spots, you could see florets of mushrooms, though what these mushrooms consumed (or what consumed them) was unclear. Apart from the mushrooms, the only living thing they could find was a spider. On further inspection, it was discovered that the spider was actually dead. This was rather upsetting to more than one member of Rowdy 3.

On the whole, the cave was thoroughly unremarkable, and also thoroughly abandoned, with unclear origin and unclear purposes and actually quite a lot of dead spiders.

There was also a gleaming white object about the size of a shed right in the middle of it.

Amanda approached it almost on tiptoes, unsure of whether she was even allowed to. The thing looked elegant and bulky at the same time, like a modern, slick-line state-of-the-art wagon of the Moscow metropolitan. It had no windows and no markings on its side, and it rested in a shallow congealed puddle of some dark, slightly menacing liquid.

“Our van is cooler,” Vogel said to Martin and Gripps, and made Amanda smile.

She came nose to stark absence of a nose close to the mysterious object and began to circle it in search of some button or doorknob. It had neither, but it did have a key sticking out of its side - a normal stainless steel key, complete with a unicorn charm hanging off the keyring.

She turned the key. Something clicked deep inside the object, and the door swung open with significant force.

Amanda blinked. She was rather hoping the key would get stuck and she would have the excuse for leaving the place at once, but the weird wagon, having its own ideas of what were supposed to happen, had inconveniently forced her to carry on.

Soon the entirety of the Rowdy 3 was exploring the mysterious object from inside. As it turned out, the wagon contained a variety of unidentifiable tech junk of all shapes and sizes, as if several computers, cameras, and washing machines have been murdered and gutted, their body parts scattered on the floor. The piles obscured a large trapdoor in the middle of the room, barely noticeable, and sealed shut.

Amanda left the boys to poke the piles of scrap and wires and made her way towards her only point of interest in the wagon - a screen carved into the wall, a pale glow emanating from it. She had never seen such a screen before in her life. It seemed to have depth and dimension to it, like you could reach your hand into it. She tried to. It was solid glass.

On the screen, a few symbols swirled and rotated - symbols that she took for Arabic letters, but were in fact nothing of the sort. She poked the screen and the swirling letter disappeared, replaced by a blue background and a list of words spelled in those same unknown symbols. She picked a line at random, and suddenly the screen expanded, revealing several different panels of buttons, switches, and dials, and with a pitch black splash in the middle, blinking with stars.

She didn’t dare touch anything else.

Instead, her hand found the back of a large armchair, puffy, and covered in a glossy, leather-like material. She rotated it on its axis and turned it towards her, mind blank. She took a seat… and at once, her head was filled with images.

A sycamore tree. A black cat sitting on the roof of a shed, licking its paws. Two men sharing a drink in a small office. An operating table and a surgeon’s gloved hand. Starry sky, ever so slightly off. A huge building engulfed in flames. The slowly turning circuits of a music box. Dirk. Dirk’s face. Dirk’s face, his eyes staring right at her.

She jumped up from the chair and gasped. Martin was by her side at once, holding her with one arm, rubbing her shoulder encouragingly. 

“Another brain movie, drummer?” he asked once she had caught her breath.

She nodded silently.

“Guys,” she said, steady on her feet once more. “Back in the van. We’re going north.”

*

They closed the wagon’s door. They came back up the way they came, and closed that door shut as well, and tried their best to bury it with sand. They returned to their van and sat, and Martin poured some tea from a thermos, and poured some whiskey into the tea as well, but kept the spiked version for himself without offering it to others.

Gripps, Cross and Vogel played cards according to ever-changing rules, which allowed them all to win and lose simultaneously. Beast had uncovered her box of Found Things, in which she collected various trinkets and souvenirs of their travels. Most stayed in the box forever, but some would later turn into bracelets or van decorations. Into the box, Beast unloaded: a piece of a dry cactus, a chunk of quartz in a funny shape, and a unicorn charm, with the stainless steel key on a keyring still firmly attached.

“What did you see?” Martin asked, sipping his alcohol-infused tea.

“The usual nonsense.” Amanda shrugged. “There was a, uh, something to do with the hospital I think, and possibly a cat. I just really remembered Dirk.”

“We’re paying the agency a visit. Settled,” Martin said. “And to hell with whatever that was we stumbled into.” He paused. “It gave me the absolute creeps.”

Amanda laughed briefly. It gave her really quite strong creeps as well.

  
“Coming from you, that’s quite validating,” she said.

“Could be a Black Wing thing,” Martin supposed. “Could be some stupid secret base with a stupid control center inside.”

“Control center?” Amanda repeated. “Oh you mean that wagon. Nah.” She shook her head. “Nah, dude. I think that was like,” she frowned, not quite believing herself, “I think that was a part of a spaceship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for commenting! i really wish i had the brain power to reply to every comment but alas my frontal lobe allows me one social interaction per day on average and it's usually spent on talking with friends or my grad school supervisor. i also wish there was an option to like the comments cause i want you to know that i read every single one multiple times and they always make my day
> 
> been feeling really down lately as well, about life in general and my writing in particular, so suddenly all chapters seem terrible and not worth posting, but i shall resist and post anyway. hopefully you will enjoy them regardless


	9. Chapter 9

On Saturday evening, Dirk had received a text message from professor Daly, asking him to specify a time at which they would leave for the summerhouse the next day. Dirk approached this question very seriously. He sat down, promptly realized he needed some paper and a pencil, got up to get them, and then sat down again with even more determination.

He considered the following factors.

Every morning, it would take him at least twenty minutes to wake up, think about the day, take his phone, forget about everything he was going to do in that day, become helplessly lost in seven Reddit threads, and finally fall out of bed propelled by the realization that he had just spent twenty minutes reading about the table etiquette of ancient Sumerians and was now utterly late to something as a result.

He rounded this up to half an hour.

It would take him an additional fifteen minutes to rush through brushing his teeth and getting dressed, dig out a jacket from a pile in the corner of his room, run out of the apartment, remember he forgot his wallet, keys, or both wallet and keys, come back, and eventually end up in his car. The car was actually Farah’s, but that didn’t matter. The drive to Farah’s apartment, where he was expected for breakfast with Todd, took, on average, another fifteen minutes.

He rounded this up to an hour twenty minutes in total.

Though he was perfectly capable of consuming a full breakfast in about the span of a TV commercial break, a breakfast at Todd’s was a different beast altogether, and largely involved not consumption of food but rather a whole private morning talkshow with an average amount of 7.6 full conversations. This usually took about an hour, but considering that Farah was there, Dirk had to increase the margin of error to an hour and a half.

He wrote that down carefully.

The drive from Farah’s apartment to professor Daly’s house was supposed to take twenty six minutes, but Dirk had a shaky, distrustful relationship with google maps and its estimations, so he increased that to forty. He also accounted for the very real possibility of traffic, unexpected road work, and getting lost several times despite the navigator instructions. Forty minutes went up to an hour.

Dirk chewed thoughtfully on the pencil and frowned at all the numbers he had scribbled down on the paper. He then tried to add them up in his mind - which he was theoretically able to do - but had a sudden lapse of doubt in his mathematical ability and counted it by hand - and then rechecked on his phone’s calculator. All three methods gave him the number of three hours fifty minutes, which he rounded up to four hours. And so, he set his alarm clock to 9 AM and texted the professor back with a meeting time of 1 PM, satisfied with his responsibly made decision.

  
On Sunday, Dirk arrived at professor Daly’s address at 3:22 PM.

It was frankly anyone’s guess as to what sort of space-time anomaly had occurred between the alarm clock going off and Dirk stepping out of Farah’s car in front of the apartment block. Dirk attributed this mostly to three things.

First, the fact that no amount of numbers on a paper could actually give him an accurate and tangible sense of time. Second, the fact that Kevin had insisted on making crepes for all of them and would not allow, under threat of physical violence, to remove the batter from the fridge before it had at least an hour to chill.

Sadly, the crepes were worth the wait, so no one could justify any further complaints. 

And third, the fact that he failed to account for a whole day spent away from Todd and Farah, and how that would stretch out their breakfast into a sort of decadent brunch.

To Dirk’s relief, when he ran up the stairs and rang the bell on professor Daly’s door, the man greeted him with a warm smile, not a hint of anger in his expression. Or that’s what it seemed to Dirk, at least. He was far from good at reading subtle facial expressions.

But the man’s tales of how he had used the extra time to do one more search of the apartment, as well as water the plants and make some extra sandwiches for their trip, persuaded Dirk that he was not in the wrong. He helped Roger to carry the snack-filled bag down the stairs, and soon they were sitting side by side, on their way to the summerhouse. 

“Just keep driving till you get to the highway,” Roger explained, zipping the seatbelt in the passenger seat. “I’ll keep an eye on the turns from there.”

Dirk, who was delighted to be the driver again, gave him a few enthusiastic nods and gently pressed down acceleration. 

*

When Todd wandered into the living room, barefoot and with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, Kevin was occupying the entire sofa. He was staring blankly at the ceiling, one earphone piece stuck into his ear, another dangling off the sofa and swaying, ever so slightly, in the air, like a fob watch in the hands of a master hypnotist. Todd regarded him with a mix of light concern and distrust and opted to take a seat on the puffy armchair nearby.

“Have any meetings to attend?” Todd asked, and picked up an apple from a bowl on the nearby coffee table.

Kevin blinked a few times before sitting up, very slowly, and removing the earphone piece from his ear, also very slowly.

“What, on a Sunday?” he asked, staring blankly at Todd. “I’m not a heathen.”

“Don’t you have a giant company to CEO?” Todd continued.

“Yes.” Kevin nodded. “But CEOs only do the most important work,” he rushed to explain, “not the work that takes the most time. I do meetings on Mondays,” he said, “then Tuesdays are off, and Wednesdays, well, Wednesdays are also off unless it’s February, on Thursdays a few people call me on Skype, and, uh,” he seemed to be putting in considerable mental effort into his speech, “I look at some graphs and answer emails and, sometimes there are other meetings?” 

He finished even less sure of himself than he had begun. “I think a lot.” He shrugged. “And make crucial decisions.”

Todd gave him a look that visitors typically give to zoo animals that they had imagined all their life to be magnificent awe-inspiring creatures but turned out in fact to be rather docile and also considerably smelly.

“How is your being watched feeling?” Todd asked.

“Not present,” Kevin responded, shaking his head in quiet disbelief. “But hey,” he beamed, “maybe moving places worked! Maybe I’m safer here.”

“Sure,” Todd said, and bit into the apple. Very. Slowly.

*

The car sped down the highway and the world blurred around it, reduced to a background of flashing lampposts, trees, and passing by trucks. Roger made his third attempt to find nice music on the radio, but only deepened his conviction that modern pop music was produced by a bunch of monkeys pushing buttons on some music-making algorithm machine. He glanced sideways at Dirk, and Dirk glanced sideways at him. For a while more they were silent. Then, professor risked a cautious remark.

“Thank you for helping,” he said, and looked away, as if embarrassed by his words.

“Oh you’re most thoroughly welcome, professor,” Dirk beamed, “it is my job to solve cases.”

Saying it out loud made Dirk unreasonably happy. There were few people in the world who could honestly say they were that proud and delighted to have their particular occupation.

“A job, indeed, dear fella.” Roger chuckled. “And yet it’s been two days and you haven’t said a word about payment.”

Dirk glanced at him again and smiled with the corner of his mouth.

“Payment is priority number two,” Dirk insisted. “Or occasionally number three, if first priority is to not get killed. Which is kind of often, actually, but, in any circumstance, the case still comes before payment.”

“Still,” Roger continued, “this all must seem awfully silly to you, searching for an old man’s lost trinket.”

“Not at all,” Dirk wanted to reply, but the professor wasn’t done talking yet.

“But this music box…” Roger paused, suddenly dark and thoughtful. “Well, let’s say, when someone you loved, loved for a very long time, leaves you forever, every tiny thing they’ve touched becomes sacred in your eyes. Especially gifts. Especially ones they’ve made with their own hands. 

“Like something to remind you that they lived, they cared… that good times have happened, even if they’re over.” He paused again, and the next words to come out of his mouth were barely a breath, full of a mellow, distant ache. “It’s been five years and sometimes it still hits me all over again that he’s gone.”

  
Dirk frowned, and blinked rapidly, trying his best to subdue the momentary burn in his throat and eyes from a brief but sudden avalanche of feeling. 

It’s been years. More than five, more than twenty, even. He could hardly remember his parents anymore. How old was he, when he was taken away from them? Ten? Eleven? Hardly older than that, and not a word from them ever since, not a visit. Never even found out what happened to them, blocked in his mind all accounts of how he was taken from his house. Taken to not be returned for a decade. 

He searched for them after being released, obviously, he searched. He found no records and no graves - his childhood home sold to a family that has never even heard the surname “Cjelli”, all traces of his old life wiped from the world. His childhood toys rotting in a dumpster somewhere, no doubt. 

Perhaps they were dead. Perhaps they weren’t, but rather fled the country decades ago, fearing another raid from Black Wing. In either case, he would never see them again, ever, and he had almost made peace with it, except for rare moments like this when tears would swell in his eyes briefly, momentarily, before he would force his mind to switch away.

His new name was Dirk Gently. Dirk Gently. Not Cjelli. Never again. 

  
“How did you and Arthur meet?” Dirk asked, in what was supposed to be a cheerful voice, but came out just a smudge too forced for his liking.

“In university.” Roger smiled. He appreciated this turn of conversation. “He was already a graduate student while I was an undergraduate. He was the professor’s assistant in my electromagnetic theory class. Yes.” He chuckled quietly to himself. “My entire group couldn’t stand him!”

“Why?” A range of emotions, from surprise to light confusion to humorous interest, flashed across Dirk’s face.

“Oh, well,” Roger began to explain, “Arthur was a strange man even by our academic standards. The kinds of things he used to say, it took a real effort to understand him. In a perfectly casual conversation!” He chuckled merrily again. “Not a good combination in a confusing physics subject.”

Dirk nodded. He himself often said things and did things that took other people considerable effort to decipher. Years ago, the Black Wing psychiatrist had attributed this to either autism, ADHD, or both - the man didn’t feel qualified enough to specify. Dirk himself spent most of his early childhood convinced that he was secretly adopted from a family of space aliens.

“But he was delightful,” Roger continued. “So passionate, so dedicated. Very funny. And kind.” He nodded to himself. “Very kind, to everyone. He showed me the level of respect no professor or grad student has ever shown to an undergraduate in my time, especially to a black undergraduate. He stayed with me till midnight helping with all the assignments I had troubles with.” He sighed, and smiled warmly. “We were inseparable ever since. Best friends virtually overnight.”

Dirk smiled back, hands gripping the steering wheel. Yet another feeling he could relate to fully.

“A turn in a few dozen meters, son, a left turn,” Roger said, and Dirk sternly ignored the warm feeling in his chest that the word ‘son’ had given him. “We’re almost there. Finish line, so to say.”

The car exited the highway at last. The gray asphalt disappeared, replaced by coarse sand and gravel, and walls of green appeared on either side of the road. The city, with its faceless apartment blocks and anonymous crowds, was behind. Ahead was a quiet, welcoming village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so two announcements! 
> 
> First, I have cross-posted this story to royalroad, and while this doesn’t affect this fic in any way (I will still be posting first on AO3), I would really appreciate it if you could click this link 
> 
> www.royalroad.com/fiction/35815/one-septendecillion-brass-doorknobs
> 
> and leave a review! If you’ve left a comment on this fic before, you can literally just copy it and paste it there in the reviews, or if you’ve left kudos, feel free to give the story as many stars as you think it deserves. It would seriously help me out a lot.
> 
> Second, I am toying with the idea of recording a podfic for this as well! Here’s my first attempt at chapter one  
> (yeah I know the volume is inconsistent, I’m working on fixing that)
> 
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5YkWqq66xI
> 
> If anyone’s interested in this story being a podfic, please let me know!
> 
> Oh and as always thank you so much for kudos/comments/etc, they really make my day and ngl sometimes i re-read them at night to kick depression's ass <3


	10. Chapter 10

On Sunday evening, Farah entered the living room with a cup of green tea in her hand, and discovered Kevin and Todd engaged in mutual ignoring of each other. They had somehow taken up every seat in the room as well, and Farah had to drag a chair from the crammed kitchen. 

She pushed the chair closer to Todd. He raised his eyes from his phone, gave her a warm smile, and was immediately back to the phone again. Farah tapped her fingers on the nearby coffee table. This case had been their strangest yet, on the account of strange things stubbornly refusing to happen to them.

“So,” Farah said, and took a minute long break to come up with something to say next. “I still can’t scrape off the crepe batter from the stove.”

“Hey.” Todd was alert at once, sitting up straight in the armchair. “Why didn’t you tell me you were cleaning? I would’ve helped.”

“I didn’t think I’d need help.” She shrugged. “And it’s my stove after all.”

“Yeah, true, but… I live here too,” Todd pointed out. “We should, you know, we should split the responsibilities and so.”

“I can decide for myself which housework to do, Todd,” Farah replied, ever so slightly annoyed. “I’m not five. I can clean a stove if I have to.”

“And I’m telling you that you didn’t. Have to,” continued Todd, a tad bit more annoyed that Farah had been. “Cause I could have done it for you.”

“If I needed you to clean the stove,” Farah was now visibly annoyed, “I would have asked you, damn it!”

“Guys,” Kevin said, and made them both turn their heads with enough speed and velocity to cram their necks. “Are you seriously arguing about who gets to do housework?”

Both were momentarily stumped by this question. Then, Todd spoke.

“You could have volunteered to clean the stove,” he said to Kevin with the intonation of a father who was trying to appear strict but hadn’t the slightest clue of how strictness worked. “You got it dirty in the first place.”

“I don’t know how to clean off stuff like that!” Kevin found this suggestion hilarious.

“Maybe it’s time to learn then.” Todd shrugged.

“Hey.” Kevin seemed miffed. “It’s not my fault I was born rich. I never had the proper nurturing environment to acquire those skills, okay?”

“Dude, being a rich isn’t a disease.” Todd snorted with laughter. “You know you can give away your money at any moment, right?”

“But my financial advisers say that’s bad,” Kevin whined.

The following moment of intense eye rolling in profound silence was disturbed by a ringtone that neither Farah or Todd recognized. The sound of some thundering classics piece made Kevin fall out of the couch, leap towards Farah and grab onto to her like a frightened baby monkey. Todd stared at him in decisive confusion.

“They’ve come for me!” Kevin proclaimed. “Save me Farah.”

“It’s… the phone,” Todd commented. “Yours.”  
  
“Oh,” Kevin said, but didn’t let go of Farah just yet.

The phone meanwhile continued to ring, which prompted Todd to get up, pick the seemingly unscathed iPhone from the floor on which it had landed after Kevin’s leap, and hand it over to its owner.

“Woah,” the man muttered, staring at the screen as if it was his first look at an extremely precious giant diamond. “It’s… it’s Alexandra.”

“Answer it!” Todd urged, almost prepared to either push the button himself or punch the man in the face.

But Kevin beat him to the first option, and, untangling himself from Farah, switched the call to the speaker.

“Kevin Alistair McDougall!” the phone yelped, which made Kevin flinch. 

“Alex?” he replied.

“God I knew you were a pig but this is crossing all the lines!” a pleasant though piercingly loud voice carried on. “Please tell me that you are severely ashamed of yourself and regretting your decision already or I will lose the last shred of hope in men that I have stored deep in my delusional wishfully thinking brain.”

“What are you talking about?” Kevin’s eyebrows were engaged in some sort of exotic dance on his forehead.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about,” Alex responded, appalled. “The ring! And fuck, McDougall, it’s expensive, whatever, the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought if that wasn’t another hideous lie, but if you needed it back, you should have asked!” she fumed. “I would have taken the time to personally come into your stupid mansion and throw it into your stupid face but no, you had to sneak into my apartment! I can’t believe you copied my key as well even though you said you wouldn’t, that’s just…”

“Alex!” Kevin interrupted her. “I didn’t take the ring. It’s yours. All the gifts I gave you are yours. I’d never, and, uh anyway, you’re the one who’s trying to get me killed, so…”

“Trying to get you killed?” the voice from the phone went up in pitch. “Are you kidding me, McDougall? Do you think I care enough about you to do something like that? I had to get your phone from your secretary, for god’s sake, I googled your company like three times before I got the name right.”

“I am confused,” Kevin said to no one in particular, and handed Farah the phone. “Please talk to her. I need a moment.”

Farah regarded him with slight concern, but took the phone and switched the speaker off. She then left for the kitchen to talk undisturbed.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re insufferable?” Todd asked matter-of-factly, not a hint of malice in his voice.

“No, they usually tell me ‘it is a pleasure to work with you, Mr McDougall’,” Kevin replied, seemingly not offended.

“Alternative question: is everyone you interact with paid by you?”

“Most of them, yeah.”

“Right.”

When Farah returned from the kitchen five minutes later, she was already going through several mental calculations at the same time. She pointed her finger at Kevin, lost her thought, and stopped again. Then opened her mouth to speak, then stopped yet again.

“Two things,” she spoke at last, and began to pace the room slowly. “She has not hired a hitman, an assassin, or anyone of that description. She wants absolutely nothing to do with you, and even if she wanted you dead,” Farah told Kevin casually, “she would have done it herself, and I honestly believe that she could. Second.” She paused in the middle of the room. “Someone did take her ring. Only that ring. Nothing else. No signs of her place being robbed either, apparently.”

“Couldn’t she have just lost it?” Todd suggested.

“Unlikely,” Farah replied. “She hasn’t worn it anywhere in a month. It was in her apartment all the time. She never even moved it. So it was almost definitely stolen, except why would someone take that ring from a whole bowl of expensive jewelry and leave everything else? Which means,” she was back to pacing, “that these are…”

“…mysterious circumstances,” Todd finished for her. “And maybe the ring disappearing and Kevin’s, uh, thing, are…”

“…connected!” Farah finished for him. “Yes.”

“What, and I cannot stress this enough, the hell are you two talking about?” Kevin looked at Todd, then at Farah, then at Todd again.

“Finally this is feeling like a case.” Todd beamed. “I need to call Dirk,” he added, already reaching for his phone. “This is his area.”

*

Approximately at that same moment, Dirk and Roger were stepping out of the car next to a shabby picket fence painted a faint shade of blue. While Roger searched his pocket for the keys, Dirk peered over the fence to examine the premises.

There stood a small wooden house surrounded by a wildly unkempt garden, which had blended into the local ecosystem and was threatening to claim the house’s terrace with its vines as well. A stone path, overgrown with moss, snaked through the grass and bushes. Two benches stood in the corner of the land, right under an old twisted cherry tree. The house’s terrace, which was barely big enough to host four people, was decorated with faded paper flags and plastic flowers.

The place was undoubtedly abandoned, slowly losing signs of human habitation - but it still held memories of its humans, if only distant memories.

“Don’t mind the mess.” Roger smiled, leading Dirk down the thread-like path and past various trees, bushes, and round spots of flowerbeds. “The inside of the house is a tad disorganized. Been a while since I cleaned it last.”

“Absolutely no problem,” Dirk assured him.

He stood aside patiently while Roger fumbled with another key, commenting on how rusty the lock had gotten and how the vines had to be dealt with and the paint on the facade was well-overdue for a refreshing. When the mechanism finally clicked and the door opened, a faint whiff of cold air and mold reached Dirk’s nose.

He entered the house after Roger and blinked. 

He knew messes; he was really quite well acquainted with messes. But the state of this house was not natural. It wasn’t just entropy taking its course - a pile of unsorted items here, a few old dishes molding over there - the usual kind. This was overturned furniture and mounds of books on the floor, scattered cutlery and broken mugs and dirty footprints all over.

The house had clearly been robbed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you so much for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, sharing on tumblr/twitter and so on - seriously, it is very much appreciated :D
> 
> and this time, i wanted to take a minute to remind you all that i have an original novel posted online for free that i am really rather proud of... i know i already have a link in the permanent after-notes but i recently got a couple reviews on it on royalroad which might be helpful for you in deciding whether this is something you wanna read - so check it out maybe?
> 
> for the record, i think it very much has a DGHDA/Douglas Adams vibe to it, and (in my opinion at least) it is the best thing i've ever written (out of *everything*, fanfics and originals) so yeah. feel free to check it out
> 
> www.royalroad.com/fiction/35690/enlightenment


	11. Chapter 11

The life of crawling on her knees and elbows in packing peanuts and alien slime is not what Varya had imagined when quitting her job in Silicon Valley.

It is, however, more or less what she understood as the reality of the infamous American dream.

On her left, Milena was rummaging through a box stuffed to the brim with cutoffs of wires. On her right, Dancho had given up on searching the floor of the capsule and was reclining comfortably in a pile of assorted rubbish. Grażyna was nowhere in sight.

Varya sniffed and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. She contemplated her unactualized potential and tremendously wasted talent. Then she removed a piece of drying up slime from her hair. Then she contemplated her potential some more.

“Have you checked your pockets?” Grażyna’s voice blasted through the headphone piece in her ear, making her flinch.

“Woooow,” Dancho’s sarcastic tone echoed through the cave. “How did I never think of that Grasia? Thank god you are our wise and inquisitive leader.”

There came prolonged static in the headphone piece, then silence.

“Fuck you,” the voice responded at last. “I’m locking the van and coming down.”

  
Four people searched every nook and cranny of the cave and the capsule - huffing, sighing, and cursing in five different languages. What was already a severely stressful week was now turning positively catastrophic. And there was no way out.

“Whose brilliant idea was it to have the same key both for the entrance door and the trapdoor?!” Milena exclaimed, having just bumped her head against the central panel desk. “Easily hackable! Zero security.”

“Eh.” Dancho shrugged. “Makes sense. Easier to keep track of one key.”

To that, Varya laughed so hard, it gave her a stomach cramp.

“Whose brilliant idea was it to leave the key in the front door?” she managed through fits of debilitating laughter.

“Ha ha very funny,” Grażyna said. “Are we seriously considering that someone might have stolen it? From this place?”

“You have a better working hypothesis?” Varya replied. “Like, come on. We’ve been searching for hours. What else could have happened to it, huh? Eaten by spiders?”

The statement seemed to have induced a brief but profound existential crisis for the whole group. Slowly, Milena raised herself from the floor, left the capsule, and began to assemble a sort of a minimalistic, borderline depressive picnic. 

She put down an enormous table cloth, stained and dry-cleaned repeatedly into oblivion. She then opened her backpack and arranged around herself various snacks, a large thermos, and mugs for four. By the time she was pouring tea from the thermos into the battered plastic mugs, the other three cave dwellers had already joined her on the rough fabric.

“Well, fellow gamers,” Milena said, raising her cups. “We’re fucked.”

And they took a moment of silence to acknowledge the statement.

“Do we even need to get there that much?” Varya said. “We can just tell them the truth and fuck off. If they need the key, they’ll find it.”

“Yeah?” Grażyna seemed appalled that such a question could even be asked. “And what about all our stuff we have stashed down there? Stuff we made, ourselves, not just stolen spare parts?”

“I thought we had it moved like a month ago.”

“Never had the time.” Dancho shrugged. “Also my Sega Mega Drive is in there as well.”

“We could ask the Bosses to let us come back for our shit,” Varya suggested, to which everyone else snorted with laughter. “Yeah,” she realized. “Fair enough.”

“Are we done with the list?” Grażyna said, in a feeble attempt to shift the conversation and regain her shaky control.

“We are not,” Dancho replied, already flipping through the aforementioned list on his phone. “We’ve lost track of the LED cotton completely, the everything-filter is stuck in the pipes of Milena’s old apartment, and space bubble wrap is at the bottom of the grand canyon.”

“What about the crystal and the forever-battery?” Grażyna inquired. “We sold that to Jo right?”

“He sold them to someone else.”

“Of course.”

“He refuses to say whom to. Bosses are on that already.”

They drank some more tea, and ate some gingerbread, and tapped their fingers on the cavefloor, staring blankly at the gleaming white walls like one looks at an artistic masterpiece that is considered deep and profound but cannot be understood without a two hour long lecture of its background and philosophical significance.

Dancho pondered a very long thought that got lost in the depths of his brain. Then, after prolonged consideration, he produced the meekest of coughs, which prompted the girls to shift their gaze from the walls to Dancho. He acknowledged the shift by coughing again, even meeker this time.

“Yes?” Grażyna asked.

“There is one option.”

“And?” she hissed through her teeth at the man.

“I was messing around with long-range tracking, a passion project of sorts, you know, just fun thing on the side…”

“Dancho!” It was Varya’s turn to lose her temper.

“There’s a tracker in the keyring charm,” he finished. “But!” he added immediately. “There’s like a 99% chance it don’t work.”

“Dancho are you clinically thick?” Grażyna asked. “Just turn it on and see if it works!”

“It will only work if there’s an internet-connected device nearby,” he replied.

“What a shame that people don’t carry internet-connected devices in their pockets,” Grażyna said. “Oh wait they fucking do, it’s called smartphones you dimwit!”

“Okay-okay, jeez.” He raised his arms in defense. “No need to be rude.”

“Yes. Sorry.” Grażyna frowned, rubbing her forehead. “I’m under a lot of stress, okay? But I know I have no right to take it out on you of course,” she spoke faster, slurring her words, “I’ve just always had these urges, but, I’m trying to, uhm, I’m, I’m working on anger management in my CBT app and…”

“Guys,” Milena urged. “Thing. Tracker. Van?”

“Yeah it’s in the van,” Dancho confirmed, getting up from the floor. “I’ll go get it.”

“I really don’t like what this whole situation has done to us guys,” Varya spoke up. “After all of this is done, we should take money from emergency fund and go on holiday.”

“After,” Grażyna agreed with slight reluctance. “After the fucking reptilian overlords are off our backs.”

*

If any of Amanda’s old friends or acquaintances, or her mum, or indeed any random person off the street were to trade places with her for a day, they would have been bombarded by such an array of intense and profoundly bizarre experience that they would have been left unable to notice any details smaller than a piano dropping on their car right before their very eyes.

This was not the case for Amanda, who had been a part of the Rowdy 3 for almost a year.

Before joining the Rowdy 3, she lived the lifestyle of a retired cat-less widow, and her days were mostly filled with the following: 

being worried about pararibulitis attacks, trying to distract herself from worrying about pararibulitis attacks through all means physically (though not always legally) allowed, and pararibulitis attacks. This left her hyper-vigilant of the tiniest slithers of reality, specs and glimpses that most people disregard at first glance.

For example, on a given Sunday morning, Amanda remembered the date, the weather, the number of people who had walked by her window in either direction, how much salt was left in the salt shaker, and whether the neighbor’s dog was snoring in its sleep or not. It all seemed awfully important to her brain and she didn’t dare argue with it. After all, keeping track of the presidential election in Bolivia or studying the grid system of Seattle was preferable to thinking about the ultimately inevitable horror show that her nervous system had in store.

This ability did not go away after Amanda exchanged her unusually quiet life for an unusually loud one. Her focus had shifted somewhat, but her attention to certain, possible, and strictly hypothetical threats did not diminish. She just became better at telling apart the categories.

As a result, on this particular Sunday morning, Amanda was aware of three things, despite an astonishing array of action and detail surrounding her like a gaudy cocoon. 

First - her coffee was too sweet.

They arrived to the city at dawn, and parked outside a friendly-looking if somewhat shoddy cafe just as it was opening its doors for the morning shift. The Rowdy vampires did not need food and drink and Beast seemed to require very little, but Amanda was but a mere human. Besides, they all deserved a break after a night-long drive.

Upon entering, they had asked for a table for six, and the waitress lead them through the entire cafe and out to the other side. They arrived together to an outdoor space facing the street to its left, just where they’d parked; this part was neat, spacious, and quite clean - too clean almost - but mostly devoid of other customers. 

The loneliness made the outdoors bleak despite bright sunlight. Sadly, no amount of hand-crafted decoration can make a public place seem welcoming in emptiness. But Amanda almost preferred the quiet.

Not that it was actually quiet, since Beast had consumed three ice-creams in under three minutes, tied together the shoelaces of a man who was fantastically rude to the waitress, and was now playing hide-and-seek with a little boy in cafe’s main hall. 

In her excitement, Beast couldn’t help but laugh and exclaim from her hiding place, which made her quite terrible at the game. This suited the boy, who had previously been moping in the corner with his colouring book and a half-empty pack of crayons, and also the boy’s mother, who unexpectedly had to cover an extra shift and had nowhere else to leave the child.

Amanda found it endearing. She tipped fifty percent for the over-sweetened coffee and shifted her attention to…

Second - electricity was going rogue everywhere.

They had noticed it in every city, town and gas station they’ve passed on their way from the desert to Seattle, or rather Amanda had. It was subtle - no power outages, no suddenly exploding wires - just the tiniest blips. Lights flickering, electronic devices going on and off at random, wi-fi signals getting stuck in walls and finding their way out with no warning. Even now she could see, out of the corner of her eyes, the traffic lights switching in strange patterns, prompting occasional honks from passing by drivers.

Martin, who sat opposite her at the table, seemed to have noticed this too, but wasn’t commenting on it just yet. Instead he pulled a cigarette out of the pocket of his jeans, checked that there was no one close enough to be bothered, and lit it up with a match. Amanda considered asking him for a joint, but changed her mind. Instead, she thought of…

Third - she had That Feeling.

That feeling, which only came before an attack, or before a vision. Which one she could never tell in advance. It was a feeling of diffused tension, of thick heavy air and cracked lips and all of your organs turning suddenly into rats. It rarely meant good, not for her and not for her family. She glanced in all directions in search of Cross, Gripps and Vogel, and found them a few dozen meters away from the cafe.

Vogel, Gripps and Cross were currently engaged in a game of catch with a collection of personal belongings, ranging from wallet and smartphone to loose change and car keys. The belongings belonged to a young man who had previously spent a solid minute cat-calling a passing by girl. 

Cross was the first to turn the situation around, stealing the man’s backpack and delightfully suggesting that the young man, too, would look lovely if he smiled, and echoing all the other not-so-innocent things that he had heard him list just a few seconds ago. Then the game ensued. 

Amanda smiled with the corner of her mouth and sipper her coffee. She was fighting with every muscle in her body to stay seated and keep her hands from shaking. Whether vision or attack, the process was far from pleasant, though she rather preferred the dizziness and sweats of visions to the pain of pararibulitis.

She gulped down more coffee, ordering sternly to the feeling to go away right this very second. The feeling refused. Well, at least she tried. She bit her lip, grabbed onto her seat, and prepared for whatever was to come. She closed her eyes and…

The phone ringed. 

Her phone.

“I think your brother is on the line,” Martin commented, and Amanda needed a moment to compose herself and dive under the table for her bag.

“It’s not my brother,” she said upon extracting the phone from the bag. “It’s an unknown number.”

“Do you want to answer?”

“Might as well.” She shrugged, and pushed the button.

The phone coughed up a cooking pot worth of static, then produced the screech of a dying pterodactyl and finally managed a distinct human voice. 

“Success!” the voice exclaimed in childish, giddy excitement. “I mean, uh,” the voice corrected, “listen closely you miserable bastards.”

“Excuse me?” Amanda couldn’t help but laugh. Through static, she could hear faint conversation which she quickly identified as bickering. “Can you repeat that please?”

“I said,” the voice continued politely in a slight Slavic accent, “listen closely you miserable bastards, or you will regret it.”

“Oh-kay.” Amanda gave Martin a side-glance, but he didn’t react. “I’m all ears.”

“Give that to me” was heard off-call, and the previous male voice was replaced by a female voice, speaking in a somewhat different Slavic accent.

“Just give us back the thing and no one gets hurt,” the new voice said.

“The thing?” Amanda, at that point in her life, was sick and tired of various things the people were constantly finding, losing, and demanding of her to give back. “You’ll have to be more specific, dude, I’ve stopped keeping track of The Things a long time ago.”

This was a lie. In fact, Amanda’s mind was rapidly going over her mental list of things that this could be referring to, but none so far were matching the expectation of being mildly harassed and threatened over an unidentified phonecall.

“Oh you know very well what I mean,” the voice said. “Unless you steal from multiple military warehouses a week.”

“Hey so I am genuinely trying to connect with you here on like a personal level,” Amanda continued, “but it’s just not working out so, is there anyone else you can pass the phone to?”

There was an audible sigh in the static, then a third voice, also female, spoke with an altogether different Slavic accent. Amanda wasn’t even aware before that morning of the existence of such a variety of Slavic accents.

“You stole the key to our spaceship,” the third voice proclaimed. “Well, not our spaceship. Sort of. We claimed it. Anyway the key. You stole it! And don’t try to deny this cause we traced it back to your mobile device.”

“Sorry to disappoint but I’m totally about to deny it,” Amanda said, half-amused and half-concerned, “because I am pretty sure I haven’t hit Alzheimer’s yet and I don’t remember any military warehouses I’ve stormed as of late or like, stolen spaceship keys, or spaceships at all, or stolen keys of any sort.”

In the depths of her mind, Amanda was panicking, trying to understand whether it was possible that she had accidentally taken the key from the weird cave they’ve been to a few days before. At the front of her mind, Amanda was still playing clueless and innocent.

“Alright then. Of course. Sure.” The voice seemed superficially calm. “If you don’t have a key then, we won’t be able to trace you and follow you wherever you go. We won’t be able to watch you from outside while you’re sleeping and sneak into your house at night to steal it back. Or more. We might want interest on it, yeah? Or revenge. Also we have knife.” The voice added as an after-thought.

Amanda swallowed. She was almost ready to pass on the phone to Martin… but then she remembered that she was in charge.

“Feel free to do that to whoever actually stole your stupid fucking key and leave me and my family alone,” she snapped angrily into the phone and ended the call immediately.

“Everything okay, drummer?” Martin stared at her, wide-eyed, while she breathed heavily and proceeded to gulp down the remains of her coffee.

Amanda glanced at Beast, who was colouring with the little boy in the corner. Then she glanced at Cross, Gripps and Vogel, who had broken the man’s phone and drained his energy, and were now engaged in some recreational busting of empty beer bottles. Then at Martin again, frowning and unsettled.

“I think we need to go straight to Dirk.”

“We’re already going.”

“No, I mean, immediately,” she said, as calmly as she could. “No stops no breaks. Get the Beast and the boys, tell them we’re leaving right now. Also I need a new phone,” she added, then got up, took the battery out of her phone, and crushed it against the pavement with the heel of her boot.

*

Meanwhile, at the other end of the call, Dancho, Grażyna and Milena were looking at Varya with deep respect and tentative admiration.

“That was… scary,” Dancho said. “Especially the revenge part.”

“You do know we sure as hell ain’t breaking into her house at night to slit her throat, right?” Grażyna asked.

“Nah. I mean yes.” Varya nodded. “You got stable tracking on her Dancho?”

“Yes sir.” He beamed. “I mean ma’am.”  
  
“Good,” Varya replied. “We should leave then. Go to the van and go after her, right?”

“Immediately,” Grażyna confirmed.

Ten minutes later, two vans were on the road already: first heading for Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and second heading after the first van…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the credit for the "organs turning suddenly into rats" phrase goes to my best friend who said this in a discord conversation. when i asked him how he wants to be credited he said he wants to be co-author which is 100% fair cause he helped *a lot* with constructing the mystery and the plot of this book and has to listen to me talk about it *constantly*
> 
> also he does amazing art. follow him on tumblr and instagram and then maybe he will post more than once in a blue moon:  
> magentabeard.tumblr.com  
> instagram.com/magentabeard/


	12. Chapter 12

Another week approached suddenly; it spent an extended chilly night lurking, prepared an ambush in the dark and unsettling hours before sunrise, and finally carried out its assault on the people of Earth with a dreaded Monday morning.

It was dreaded and despised an average amount and was otherwise uneventful, which was ironic, considering that it was ranking up the speed of extraordinary from just a tad weird to complete and utter madness. Later it would bloom into quite the spectacle, but that was later. Now the day was not so much dark, but dark-ish, and irritatingly humid, and filled with loud, obnoxiously busy streets. More or less your normal start of the week.

On that Monday morning, Dirk woke up with a distinct feeling of lack in himself. He hadn’t a clue as to what it is that he was lacking, but it was strong enough to get him out of bed without checking his phone, walk all the way to the kitchen, and drink two pints of tap water out of a soup bowl while barely pausing for breath. This is when it occurred to him that the distinct lack he was feeling was in fact thirst. Based on a first approximation, he deduced that it was caused by him going most of the previous day forgetting to perhaps drink something.

Later Dirk proceeded to put on trousers and the first t-shirt in sight (it turned out to be the Sound of Nothing t-shirt), grab all the things he usually forgot to grab, and go outside to begin his journey towards another breakfast at Todd’s. Immediately upon walking out, he was greeted by a wall of rain. This was an unexpected Monday morning development, since half an hour ago when Dirk woke up the sky was perfectly clear and almost blue in colour.

“Strange,” thought Dirk, then proceeded to think about a different thing he found strange, and within 45 seconds had been lead astray by a chain of associative links into the realm of competitive dog grooming. He thought about many other things, such as hybrid fruits, black holes, snail-fighting knights in medieval books and cinnamon toast, while he searched for a rain-appropriate jacket. When he found one at last and stepped outside again, the rain was gone and the sky was back to almost blue.

“Strange,” thought Dirk a second time, and got into Farah’s car at once, somewhat afraid that if he were to pop back in for a different jacket, the rain would return with a vengeance and drain him out.

He made two side-quests on his way to Todd and Farah’s apartment, one to a pharmacy to buy a very specific brand of toothpaste he was running out of, and one to a bakery to buy something for tea. The girl who worked at the bakery handed him the macaroons in a cardboard box while making a passing comment about electricity behaving weirdly in the entire street.

“Ooh macaroons,” thought Dirk, thanked the seller girl and went back into Farah’s car.

He missed Farah herself by a few minutes upon arriving. She had just left in Kevin’s Aston Martin, on the passenger seat next to Kevin, who was gently holding onto her elbow for protection and moral support. Outwardly, Farah reacted to this by rolling her eyes. Deep down, she found that a bit repulsive but rather endearing, the same way one feels about a cat bringing them a dead mouse as a gift.

Todd greeted Dirk at the threshold with a broad smile.

“Thought you’d be with your professor,” he said, as they walked side by side into the kitchen.

“Roger has a full day of lectures and grading papers,” Dirk explained, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I am currently in the careful consideration part of my case. It’s here.” He tapped his left temple. “This is where the magic is happening. In my mysterious box of case solutions.”

“Sure.” Todd smirked. “Which tea do you want?” he asked, pointing at the assortment in the cabinet above the stove.

This was a redundant gesture. Todd did not require Dirk’s answer, as he knew exactly which tea he drank, and in which way, and from which mug. That knowledge was one of many in Todd’s catalog of Stuff He Knew About Dirk, alongside with his favorite ice-cream flavour (plain vanilla with rainbow sprinkles), his favorite seats in a cinema (middle of third row from the top), and his preferred bath temperature (as hot as physiologically possible). The last he discovered under curious circumstances which we will not dwell on for now.

“Are you going to tell me then?” Todd asked, once they were both in possession of a hot beverage, watching the steam rise slowly up from the cups. “About your case? You first, then me.”

“Of course I will,” Dirk said, putting three macaroons at once directly into his face. “Who do you think I am, some sort of no-fun secretive case not-teller? Please.” He scoffed. All of this he was saying with his mouth stuffed, but somehow managing to produce coherent sound without spluttering crumbs all over himself, the table, and Todd. “So,” he added another macaroon, gulped down some tea, and seemed at last satisfied. “Here is the scoop.”

He explained the case so far in his usual manner, meandering and zooming in on the most random of details, and got all the way to entering Roger’s summerhouse when Todd interrupted him.

“Wait,” Todd said. “So it really is about a missing music box? I kept waiting for you to throw in some twist but…”

“There is no twist,” Dirk replied. “And also no music box, as I was about to tell you, Todd.”

He got up from the table, too excited to carry on sited.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “we got into professor’s Daly summerhouse, and discovered it in ruins. Utterly devastated. Turned upside down and clearly ravaged by a thorough search of the house, with strongly suspected underlying thief premise.” 

“Underlying thief premise?” Todd repeated, half-smiling.

“It is a technical detective term, Todd.” Dirk nodded, solemnly serious. “I insisted on calling the police on the off-chance that they would be of use - last time I am making that mistake - and we examined the place ourselves while waiting for the officers to arrive. And I discovered,” he got back to the table for a moment to finish his tea, “I discovered that there was no pattern to the chaos except for one.”

“What was it?”

“Every battery-equipped device in the house had been relieved of the batteries,” Dirk explained. “But!” And he pointed a dramatic finger at the ceiling, which made Todd look up involuntarily for a second. “The batteries were immediately discarded on the floor.”

He took a pause to let the information sink in.

“And based on this one pattern in the midst of disarray,” Dirk proclaimed, “I made the conclusion that it is relevant to the case, based on a detecting technique pioneered by the great detective Poirot.”

“Did she really invent a detecting technique?” Todd asked.

“Who?”

“Agatha Christie?”

“What does Agatha Christie has to do with all this?”

“She wrote the books about Poirot?”

“Books?”

“Yeah? And then they made a TV show based on that?”

“It was a TV show?” Dirk sadness was one of a child who had just been told that Santa Clause was in fact another invention of their parents, alongside with the Easter Bunny and paid internships. “Ah nuts.” He pouted. “I thought it was a documentary! And I only discovered it a month ago, actually. Before that I thought Poirot was a type of a Belgian bun.”

“Anyway.” Todd decided to move the conversation along artificially. “Did the police help?”

“Kind of the opposite to be honest.” Dirk shook his head. “As in they made the floor dirty and took a few photos and said they would call if they found anything. I don’t think they will, unless Sherlock and Tina have police friends in Seattle. Roger wasn’t a fan of them either,” he added. “Actually he said, and I’m quoting roughly, ‘it is a surprise they didn’t shoot me in the back for robbing my own house’.”

“But was anything actually stolen?” Todd asked.

“A lot of books, for some reason,” Dirk replied. “And some food items. Two whole cartons of shelf-stable chocolate milk. Mm. Pity about the milk…” he muttered. “So what about yours?”

It was Todd’s turn to summarize his case. Well, in his case, there wasn’t a lot to summarize, apart from yesterday’s phone call.

“Two mysterious break ins with weirdly specific stealing,” Todd pointed out. “Could be…”

“…connected!” Dirk beamed. “Indeed. I will consider this.”  
  
“Also Kevin’s being watched feeling tends to come and go a lot,” Todd added. “Was completely fine yesterday, and then wham, today he’s all jittery again. More jittery than usual anyway. Started freaking out at 10am exactly. Then Farah took him for a walk to his tower.”

“Pardon?”

“Accompanied him to a meeting,” Todd explained. “To his company building. They will be back for dinner. Which he will probably cook. Ugh,” Todd frowned. “The dishes will be on me this time.”

“Have you noticed the very brief rain at around that time?” Dirk asked.

“No…” Todd replied. “There was a rain?”

“Yes, I had a similar reaction,” Dirk said, stuffing his mouth with broken macaroon pieces thoughtfully. “Interesting. Really interesting.”

*

Out of all the mysterious things that were beginning to pile up on that Monday, Kevin’s inconsistent feeling of being watched had the simplest explanation: Orson.

Orson took a day off on Sunday to accompany his elderly mother to the church. He considered this an essential, non-negotiable day off, so he didn’t even think of notifying his bosses. 

He resumed his responsibilities on Monday, and even arrived early to compensate for the Sunday absence. At 6:15 AM sharp he arrived on Washington street and kicked off his investigation by circling every building in sight seven times over. This was crucial for two reasons: creating a map of the area in his brain, and getting some much needed gentle exercise. Orson was very responsible when it came to exercise.

Once the map had settled in his brain, he began to wander from building to building, pretending to be various deeply uninteresting and desperately lost persons, and thus engaging local residents in unassuming chit-chat. Through this method, he triangulated to a specific building in under two hours. 

Triangulating to a specific floor took much longer than he anticipated. He waited patiently downstairs for someone to pass him by, pretending to be a confused mailman, but no one wanted to talk to him or indeed even look in his direction for some reason. He eventually had to succumb to knocking on doors, and was soon pulled in almost by force into an extensive coffee chat with a remarkably talkative woman.

The woman turned out to be a newly divorced 55-year old teacher with a passion for bird watching and a seemingly endless supply of cucumber and cress sandwiches. Orson wasn’t sure what exactly was on the woman’s agenda. One part of him thought she was just lonely and in need of a conversation. The other, going off of the woman’s looks and strange preoccupation with the colour of his eyes (in the span of an hour, she compared them to cinnamon powder, tropical earth after rain, and sparkling agate), he suspected another reason.

He escaped the woman at last with a napkin that had her name and phone number scribbled on it. He began the motion to throw the napkin out, then paused. Perhaps Carol was fifteen years older than him and also a complete stranger, but she had very lovely eyes too.

Regardless, the very long conversation got him to a specific floor in a specific building, at which point Orson had decided that he’d made enough noise for the day, and that it was time to leave and lay low for 24 to 48 hours. He bumped into some weird man in a bright yellow jacket on his way out and retreated to a Dunkin Donuts.

He was in the process of cutting his cream-filled lunch with a plastic knife and fork when his phone rang for the first time that day. He then proceeded to ignore it for the first time, being of firm belief that phones had no place on a dinner table (or a Dunkin Donuts plastic bench). He ignored it the second time while on the bus to his home, and for the third time while taking clothes out of the washing machine where he forgot them the day before. 

When he picked up the phone at last, the two persons on the other end were very, very angry.

“Orson?” the distorted voice shouted as soon as the call was answered. “We are very, very angry.”

Orson swallowed a knot of anxiety in his throat and removed the phone from his ear by just a tiny bit.

He had two bosses, who refused to disclose their names and were therefore referred to exclusively as Boss 1 and Boss 2. Both spoke through voice distortion devices that made them sound like evil robots on helium gas.

The bosses were also exceedingly strange, which, considering that they hired Orson from a LinkedIn profile that had no information apart from his CV and a photo of Deadpool, was not that surprising.

“I am sorry I did not pick up the phone,” Orson mumbled. “I try to maintain a very strict work-life balance.”

“You are a mercenary, you idiotic human monkey,” Boss number one spat out. “You’re not supposed to have a work-life balance!”

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

There was a prolonged awkward pause.

“Well?” Boss 1 demanded. “What are you waiting for? Report on the state of your mission!”

“Reporting,” Orson replied. “I was unable to get close enough to the target at the previous location. Then the target moved locations, actually, and today I was able to track to a specific floor in a specific building. I expect to will have fulfilled the mission by the end of the week.”

“Unacceptable!” Boss 1 bellowed. “We do not have a week!”

There was some shouting and crackling, and eventually the phone seemed to have been passed on to Boss 2.

“Listen here you little hairless rat,” Boss 2 said calmly. “I know we are your bosses, but we have our own boss, and that boss is not very lenient on missed deadlines. One of the deadlines is approaching faster than we’d anticipated, and when it’ll hit, Orson, when it’ll hit, we will be in big big trouble. And you know what will happen then?”

“I will be in big trouble too?”

“That’s right Orson, very clever!” Boss 2 exclaimed, with the excitement of a dog trainer who had finally managed to get a “sit” command out of a particularly difficult specimen. “You have potential. Now finish your mission in three days tops or you won’t have any. Bye.”

And Boss 2 hung up the phone.

“Well that was… unexpected,” Orson said to no one in particular, and, deciding that he won’t be able to do anything about it till tomorrow anyway, returned to dealing with his laundry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the academic year has started, but instead of slowing down with this thing, i am trying to speed up!
> 
> i have set up a progress track page to motivate myself and i am planning to finish this novel before the year ends. once i will sufficiently catch up and go beyond a chapter-per-week speed, i will start posting twice a week. based on a rough estimation, i am guessing this story will span in total +/- 35 chapters and will be around 70k words long :D


	13. Chapter 13

Supervisor Adams strode down the corridor of the Black Wing Facility Gamma as if he was headed to his own presidential inauguration.

This was his usual manner of walking as of late, which contrasted sharply with how he used to walk a mere two years ago.

Back then - before Black Wing, before his promotion, even before he met Bart - Ken Adams walked as if he had been banned from every place on Earth, including his own bathroom. He walked like he had something to apologize for at all times; like was constantly breaking the law, like his every step and move was observed and recorded and judged.

Now he was the one to observe, record, and also judge. 

His back was straight and his step was confident and firm. His jaw muscles were relaxed and his arms rested comfortably by his sides, fingers still, not fidgeting, not hidden in his pockets. He wore simple, almost casual black clothes. He didn’t need a suit and tie to enforce his authority, because he was the authority here, and every person, animal, and bacteria in the facility knew that perfectly.

Of course they did. There were dire consequences for not knowing it.

He reached the end of the corridor and ambled casually through a door labeled with a big scary sign proclaiming “restricted” in bold red letters. No one would question his actions or reasons - he was allowed everywhere. He smiled at a woman who passed him by on his way to cell number 42.

“Good evening, supervisor,” she greeted politely, and he greeted her back.

Everyone had to address him as supervisor here. Everyone. Even…

“Bart,” Ken said in his steady, authoritative voice. “I see you’re still discovering new ways to express your individuality.”

The door clicked open, he stepped in, the door thudded heavily behind him and locked itself shut. Now supervisor Adams found himself in a large rectangular room, with looming ceilings and polished floors and gleaming white walls. The room would have been unremarkable and spotless to the point of sterility if it wasn’t for one fact: it was Bart’s room.

Due to that fact, the standard, impersonal, clinical space had been transformed in all manners reasonable and unreasonable into a vibrant human habitat. It had stolen cactus plants and smuggled plastic mugs. It had decorations made out of paper napkins and junk food packages. It had a blanket fort around the bed. And, on the walls, it had countless drawings - in pencil, crayon, watercolour, and macaroni - depicting all manner of things.

Many were of people: of a scissor-wielding man with pink hair and his prince boyfriend, of a giant moon hanging in the sky and peculiar tress with hamburgers vines, of Dirk Gently running away screaming, and of Bart herself, usually covered in blood, sometimes wearing pretty dresses. There were no obvious trends in her paintings, except for one…

“Ken.” Bart was currently engaged in the process of making cardboard butterflies out of Oreo packages. Since she wasn’t allowed to have any sharp objects, Bart was using her bare hands and teeth for this purpose. “Come, sit down.”

“You know it’s supervisor, right?” he said, smiling, as he approached the plastic IKEA table at which she was sitting and pulled out a chair for himself.

“Sure, dickhead.” She smirked in response. “This one is for you.” And she handed him over a blue cardboard butterfly.

Ken pocketed it carefully.

“I’ve heard you had another fight in the canteen,” Ken said.

“And I’ve heard that guy call me crazy,” she replied. “As if.”

“As if what?”

“As if everyone else in this shithole’s not crazy.” She frowned.

“You know you get privileges here, Bart,” Ken continued. “You know I don’t treat you the same. You have your room, your art supplies… you get to go on trips with me.”

“I kill people for you,” Bart disagreed. “That’s what I do. You put me in a car and drive me a long time and then I shoot some guys and then we get McDonald's. It’s not a privilege. Sometimes I kill people for you that I don’t feel like killing. But I do that for you because you are my friend. So I am doing you a favor.”

“And I value that. Really.” Ken nodded. “But I have people above me, Bart! People who are keeping an eye on this facility. And if you keep having fights in the canteen and the garden and so on, I’ll have to revoke those privileges. Do you understand?”

Bart looked at him, frowning, with rather more vicious determination to bite off his ears than understanding. Ken’s body tensed up. He took a deep breath in and…

“I understand.” She grinned, suddenly sanguine again. “So, what have you been up to this week, in your big scary office place?”

“Oh man.” Ken’s muscles relaxed and he leaned against the back of his seat comfortably. “I’ve had a crazy week. Do you remember about that thing I told you a couple months ago, about Project Prometheus?”

“Was I listening to you when you told me?”

Ken shrugged, smirking.

“I’ll tell you again then,” he said. “Well.”

When Ken Adams became the supervisor of Black Wing, a great many things were moved in the institution in all kinds of directions. A lot of those things were dead bodies, following the Wendimoor attacks. But not all were formerly alive persons. Some were just some really terrible decorations.

Another thing that got moved was an enormous pile of documents - printed, scribbled by hand, stored on USB drives, CDs, floppy disks and magnetic tape, and even arranged from coins on a piece of wood. All of these records previously resided in supervisor Friedkin’s office, where they remained utterly untouched. Supervisor Adams wanted the opposite result to his predecessor, so he took the opposite approach. Upon assuming his position, he locked himself in his new office and spent a whole week reading the entirety of the files.

He came out on the other end of that experience thoroughly convinced that the United States of America was the most poorly managed country of all times and that it was frankly remarkable that it had managed to remain in existence for so long. 

Only around 18 and a half percent of the files contained useful information; the rest were disposed of immediately through the method of burning in a metal barrel. It made a wonderful bonfire on which Bart - as a special privilege - was allowed to toast some marshmallows.

Out of the useful eighteen percent, Ken delegated the creation of a well-sorted, labeled and cataloged archive, and personally crafted a spreadsheet of all the holistic individuals that Black Wing had ever encountered. They were sorted gradually in one of several categories. Some were useless, some potentially useful but too dangerous to contain, and some were better off closely watched but free. The last, most unfortunate category, contained individuals that, from that day on, were systematically tracked, kidnapped, and imprisoned in the Black Wing facility.

So far he had collected 11 of them and was planning to get all 23. This was someone else’s job and Ken made sure that it was done swiftly and competently, and that those who failed at it were disposed of, sometimes with the same method as the useless files, if their mistakes were grave enough. The first goal of Black Wing as of now was to collect these assets; the second was to keep the first goal as secret as possible. And it was working out beautifully for them.

There was, however, one subject that was so intriguing and so mysterious to Ken that it quickly became his personal passion and obsession to get hold of through any means necessary.

Project Prometheus.

Very little remained of Project Prometheus in the records, since he was never an official considered asset of Black Wing. In fact, all Ken had was a single floppy disk with a thread-like account of the project’s history. 

It noted that Prometheus was first discovered during the pre-Black Wing era of the program, in the seventies. He was never detained or held captive, though he was periodically brought in for briefings. All that was on record about Prometheus was his gender, which was male, and his age, which was noted as 37 in 1975. No photo, no description of his face, and no biographical information ever existed.

From Ken’s perspective, this hardly mattered, since he only cared about one thing: Prometheus could fix anything. Quite literally anything. He was routinely tasked with repairs that seemed beyond any human range of ability, and yet he always delivered. Prometheus was brought in countless times to assist on countless projects. He took part in the Apollo missions. He prevented two disasters at nuclear power plants. He worked on top secret military developments and even fixed president Carter’s personal car.

Then, he disappeared. The program fell apart and had to be reassembled from scratch. All traces of Prometheus’s existence were erased, leaving only the single floppy disk. He was never contacted again and no attempts were made to find him.

And this was driving Ken insane.

Granted, now in 2019 the man could have been dead for a while, but just the possibility of finding him haunted Ken’s dreams, afternoon naps, and breakfast waffles. For if the man was still alive, and if he could bring him in…

  
“I could do anything!” Ken beamed. “If he can fix anything, imagine what kind of technology he can build!”

“That sounds very boring,” Bart replied honestly. “Why would you want a repair guy when we have like, a guy who speaks to dead people, and a girl who turns people into mind controlled zombies by kissing them. That’s the cool stuff. Not some stupid technician.”

“Well he is very cool to me,” Ken retorted. “And today I wanted to share my progress because I think we finally have a lead on him!” he exclaimed. “That sounds exciting, right?”

“Eh.” Bart shrugged and bit into a cardboard butterfly with her canines. “But if it’s important to you, I am listening,” she added, spitting out chewed cardboard on the floor.

“I have a lead. I think,” Ken repeated. “And my agents are tracking him down, as well as investigating some other leads related to the case. Oh, Bart.” He took a deep breath in. “So many weeks, months of work, and I finally feel like I am doing something great with this place. That it is becoming a force for good.”

“You are killing people and lying to people and keeping people prisoner,” Bart said quietly. “I don’t know much about good, but you ain’t it Ken.”

“Well you know how people say, the ends…”

“Always suck and I wish things never ended.”

“…justify the means,” Ken finished for her. “I am creating something wonderful here, okay?” he continued. “A power that can be used to fix so many things! And I am in charge, and I am good at it. Can’t you be happy for me?”

Bart didn’t reply.

“Visit over,” Ken said coldly, and got up from the table. “I have things to do. I’m busy.”

“Yes, you are a busy man, bla bla.” Bart nodded. “Go do your important business stuff.”

“I will.”

“Whatever.”

He turned the lights off just before he closed the door, the Oreo packaging butterfly held gently between his fingers.

*

Despite the chaotic, reality-shattering nature of the reality backstage, Friedkin had so far managed to construct a rather orderly and serene life for himself. For example, today was a Tuesday, and on Tuesdays Friedkin held bookclub meetings with his own projections - unless the weather was particularly sunny, which constituted a solid enough reason to switch the bookclub and the picnic places in the weekly schedule.

This was quite a feat on Friedkin’s part, since the backstage did not have linear time to begin with, let alone arbitrary assigned points such as Tuesdays and Octobers and Christmases. In fact, Friedkin’s conviction that he was currently experiencing a Tuesday was entirely belief-based. It is worth noting that, in the backstage, weather as such did not exist either. All of it was the product of Friedkin’s impressive (if a bit inconsistent) imagination.

On that day, Friedkin’s imagination dictated that the book he picked for himself to discuss was far too boring, and was therefore quickly abandoned in favor of universe TV. As a result, he now sat in his bookclub room wearing a lovely knitted sweater, surrounded by his projected copies all wearing lovely knitted sweaters, and watched the conversation between Ken and Bart unfold before his very multiple pairs of eyes.

“I don’t think this new guy is good at his job at all,” Friedkin proclaimed, popping an imaginary chocolate-covered raisin into his mouth.

“Wellllll,” a different Friedkin said. “He is better than we’ve been.”

“That is not much of a compliment,” a third Friedkin said.

“Guys,” the original Friedkin interrupted. “I thought we agreed that we should, like, be kinder to ourselves and stuff?”

All Friedkins nodded, apologizing for the self-deprecating slip.

“I agree though,” Original Friedkin said. “We weren’t very good at my job.”

“Yeah, but,” Another Friedkin said. “We like, did less harm while we were at it? Mostly cause we didn’t accomplish much but, you know. We definitely did less harm.”

“Maybe it is better to be a terrible good person than it is to be a very competent evil person,” one of the Friedkins said, and the rest stared at him like one remembers a particularly impressive moment of their lives that they aren’t quite sure had really happened.

“I don’t think he considers himself evil,” original Friedkin said. 

“They never do,” said Friedkin to Friedkin.

Friedkin, who had spent many exhausting hours watching various real, aspiring, and failed dictators ruin very many lives for one supposedly great cause or another, whole-heartedly agreed.

“Switch the channels,” one of the Friedkin’s demanded, and then immediately realized that no one could possibly protest, and did it himself. “That’s better. It’s the weird professor again!”

“Ooh.” Original Friedkin moved closer to the gaping hole in the very fabric of reality to get a closer look. “Is it just me guys, or is he like, in trouble or something?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now, *13 chapters in*, i finally have all the plots introduced at least, and the mystery is 100% set up, so - if anyone likes speculating about solutions, feel free to start! i will not spoil anything but i am willing to answer questions about the mystery in a very vague and approximate matter :D


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for mild psychological horror and dissociation

Powerful phantoms and evil spirits were haunting professor Daly’s morning cup of coffee.

Or, rather, they weren’t so much haunting, as having an early morning briefing on the possibility of implementing such a haunt on a reasonable timescale. It manifested in a faint aftertaste of acid on professor’s tongue and a slight jitter of professor’s fingers on the porcelain cup. 

This was not Roger’s usual experience with coffee. His usual experience with coffee was one of most professional academics, which is of a fondly regarded and essential addiction. For example, coffee was required to persuade yourself that you genuinely enjoy sitting through a two hour seminar dominated by specialists stuck in a never-ending rat race of publish or perish. In other words, it was usually a life-saver as opposed to an anxiety-inducing poison.

With a slight shudder somewhere deep in his spine, Roger put the coffee cup down and rubbed his left eye. Unfortunately, the coffee demons were not the first sign of Tuesday morning trouble. In fact, Roger had been under a thrall of a particular feeling since the very moment he woke up. The feeling was a low grade, slow simmer worry; it reminded him of a back-of-the-head buzz that occurred when he would forget about something, such as that the stove was still on. Alas, he had checked the stove about twenty times already, and was greeted every time with a complete absence of flames.

Roger checked his phone. It showed 8:39 and no new e-mails or text messages or ancient curses disguised as mobile games. “Silly nonsense”, Roger muttered to himself, adjusting his bowtie. How could he, a professor of theoretical physics, even entertain the notion that his unexpected worry had any sort of supernatural cause? Out of the question! Just like his missing music box, this mystery had a trivial, dull explanation that was floating near the surface of his consciousness and was at arm’s reach away from being discovered. All he needed was a nice breakfast.

He was in the process of spreading a square of butter over his toast when his eyes caught a peculiar glimmer through the kitchen window. Roger’s logical first instinct was to dismiss it, but on that day, logic was not the strongest force in his body. So he put down the butter knife and approached the window tentatively, all the time focused on the source of the flickering. Upon closer inspection, the source turned out to be street lamps at the parking lot. Instead of turning out for the day, they were currently imitating malfunctioning Christmas lights.

This was enough to have Roger acknowledging his sourceless concern. A flicker like this could easily be an indication of a serious electric fault! Appropriate services had to be alerted at once in order to prevent any possible accidents, such as that one time when Arthur and him made the regrettable decision of fixing the institutes’s central heating regulator and instead transformed the building into an oasis of tropical climate. Oh, Arthur…

Roger’s hand hesitated over his phone. Suddenly he felt himself fall truly into his every eight decades of age, his mind drifting somewhere far in the past. He smiled, images wheezing past him in his memory. Was it all over for him? Had he ran out of exciting things in life, and was now destined to remember only for the rest of his days? “I’m an old fool losing my mind over flickering street lamps”, Roger thought.

Then every single light in his apartment went out at once.

Roger sat in the darkness for a while, trying to breathe as quietly as possible, and listened to the world around him. The electricity didn’t just disappear - it had stepped over the line of raving madness. It went utterly wild, chirping in the plugs, blowing bulbs in his bathroom, and making his microwave cycle through every single setting it knew, or ever heard of, or had enough creativity to come up with. Despite the situation, Roger was now feeling calmer than before. He reached for the phone and dialed the number he had saved as “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”.

But no one picked up.

“This is a matter of malfunctioning technology,” professor Daly reassured himself. “Nothing special. Nothing supernatural. A simple, annoying fault.”

As if to mock his words, the ancient TV that stood obscured by book stacks in the living room came to life and spat out the morning news in a hissing, crackling voice. Tiny sweat drops formed on Roger’s forehead. He wasn’t entirely sure, but last time he checked, the TV set was not connected to electricity in the first place.

“Is anyone here?” professor Daly called out, fingers dialing Dirk’s number again.

Nothing. Not from the empty room and not from the phone. Bracing himself for anything physically or philosophically possible, professor forced himself out of the kitchen and into the living room, where the TV was falling in and out of static. He circled the device cautiously, as if it was a feral animal about to lurch in attack. Almost too afraid to look, professor stepped behind it and traced the cord with his eyes… then let out a sigh of relief. The TV was plugged in after all.

“A silly old fool indeed.” Professor Daly chuckled.

Then someone knocked on the door.

  
“Well this is beyond disrespectful!” professor Daly exclaimed. “Whoever this is, playing tricks on me, I’ll have you know that I am a respected member of the scientific community and a professor at Cooltown University. I will not tolerate such intrusions into my daily life!”

The only response was another knock.

“Right,” professor said, now more on the anger upswing of the emotional rollercoaster. “Let’s see who this is, messing with electricity and disturbing me for no reason.”

He marched confidently into the corridor leading to the entrance door, stepped confidently across it and laid his hand on the lock with the same boiling confidence. Whoever was at the other side was now silent, perhaps aware of professor’s presence. Roger hesitated just before opening; he had a moment of overwhelming fear drown him in cold sweat, but the moment was immediately dismissed as silly superstition. He clicked the lock and swung the door open.

Opposite him, just inches away from the threshold, stood a shadow. A tall, lanky, disproportionate silhouette - legs far too thin to support the body, neck far too delicate to hold the massive head. The entire shadow was pitch black, except for the face, which was bright, blinding white, shining directly into professor’s eyes and making tears roll down his cheeks.

Professor fell back, leaning heavily against the wall, eyes transfixed on the shadow. The light was hurting him and distorting his vision, yet he was unable to pull himself away. Words got stuck in his throat, his own limbs failed him. The shadow extended an arm far too long for its body and waved it in front of professor’s face. It paused, unmoving, and professor heard another light bulb shattering to pieces somewhere in his apartment. He had almost started contemplating his own suddenly very relevant mortality when the shadow turned away as if in slow motion and disappeared from sight.

“I’ll be damned. Lord,” professor muttered. “Oh goodness me. Oh fuck. Lord have mercy on my soul.”

As if sleepwalking, he slammed the entrance door shut, grabbed his phone and a whole bag of toast bread from the kitchen, ran into the bathroom, and barricaded himself in.

*

Twenty kilometers away, Dirk had happily slept through eleven missed calls, shielded from the world by blackout curtains and a triple layers of fluffy blankets. He made a regrettable decision the previous night to follow the stream of youtube recommendations and fell into a rabbit hole the depth of the Mariana trench. He emerged on the other end at 4am, endowed with knowledge of such esoteric nature, he couldn’t even imagine a situation in which it would ever come up. Considering that Dirk had issues with the simplest of concepts, such as the current US president or the number of planets in the solar system, this was rather ironic.

Now, at almost noon, Dirk was dreaming dreams of deep sea creatures and bio-luminescent monstrosities. These were dreams he overwhelmingly preferred to dreams of Black Wing rooms, blank and faceless and empty. Sun’s long fingers seeped through the curtains and brushed across Dirk’s face; he scrunched up his nose and burrowed himself deeper into the nest of blankets arranged on his bed. The Sun did not give up. It reached deeper into the bedroom and crawled up Dirk’s exposed ankle, warming up his skin. He mumbled something into the pillow, still hoping to fall back into the dream, but alas. The moment was lost.

A hand reached out of the blanket fortress and rummaged across the floor. Once it hit its target - the phone - it retreated back underneath the covers, like a snake crawling into its den with a hunting trophy in its stomach. From the covers came a low groan of screen light hitting sleepy eyes, then a very short yelp. Next second, and Dirk was suddenly vertical, hair tousled wildly, staring at the red number eleven on his phone. He was dressed and sitting in (Farah’s) car five minutes later.

  
“I am so sorry, professor!”

Soon afterward, and Dirk and Roger sat in a nearby coffee-shop, away from the gloomy apartment still devoid of electricity.

“It’s quite alright,” Roger assured him. “You are not my bodyguard after all, and no harm came to me.”

“If something had happened to you…” Dirk continued, ignoring professor’s words. “I am a terrible detective and a terrible person and…”

The issue with apologizing is that the start of the process is tremendously challenging, but once you get going, it becomes rather more difficult to stop.

“Please stop blaming yourself for crimes that were never committed, son.” Roger smiled warmly. “As you can see, I am sitting here in front of you, whole and unharmed, if shaky.”

“Yes, but,” Dirk said. “I have to take you under my protection now. We don’t know what had happened this morning, but in case it happens again, I need you to stay where I can see you and protect you.”

“That is very sweet,” the professor chuckled, “but not strictly necessary. To be frank, I am not even sure whether that whole deal had really happened. We cannot dismiss the possibility of hallucination, especially at my age.”

“Well what if it wasn’t a hallucination?” Dirk replied, unsure of whether he should bring up his own exceedingly bizarre experiences.

“If it wasn’t,” professor said, “I dare say, whatever that fella was doing in my apartment, I don’t think he was looking for me. When he opened that door...” He shuddered involuntarily, and took a sip of his tea to calm himself down. “When he opened it, he looked at me as if he was expecting someone else. And left quite quickly, and didn’t come back.”

“Professor,” Dirk said with stern conviction. “I insist on you spending the next few days in my apartment under close protection. I do not want to scare you beyond reason, but we cannot dismiss the possibility of far graver things operating in this case. I am sure you can take a break from teaching for a little while.”

“Perhaps I do deserve a small holiday,” Roger pondered, unwilling to share the magnitutde of fear that was still dancing wild in him, and how he really rather liked the idea of being protected for a bit, even if it was just Dirk. “Alright then. But we’ll need to stop at Cooltown. I shall notify the institute organizational board and pick up some of my things.”

*

They were met on Cooltown Campus with dreary skies and a general atmosphere of unease. Everyone around seemed strangely subdued; the faculty, the staff, even the stray cats. The numbers of swarming undergrads was on a sharp decline as well, which would have been normal close to midterms - a time when all swarming undergrads retreat to libraries and dorm rooms - but was fairly suspicious now, hardly four weeks into the semester.

Dirk sat on a bench outside, waiting for the professor to inform the faculty of his emergency holiday and collect two kilos of work papers from his office. He watched the somber undergrads drag themselves to an afternoon lecture, coffee cups in hands, huddled around one person with chicken scratch notes of the only student who attended all previous classes. 

Out of curiosity, Dirk integrated himself into the group, peering over their shoulders. From the notes, he learned that something called “chirp” (or chang? chalk? chip?) was always oppressive to another chirp, and that a “quack” could be either up, dull, sponge, or bottle. This was fascinating to Dirk and he yearned to learn more, but alas, he was soon tapped on the shoulder and extracted from the group.

“Oh, Lilly.” Dirk smiled amicably, recognizing the technician-cleaner girl he saw last week.

“Yeah, hey, um,” Lilly hesitated, “private detective guy. You’re visiting Roger again?”

“Actually,” Dirk began, walking away from the crowd and lowering his voice, “we are here for a bit of an emergency evacuation.”

“What? Why?!” Lilly seemed immediately startled. “Is he okay?”

“He is okay right now, let’s put it that way,” Dirk replied, frowning in what he hoped was a manner with the appropriate level of seriousness. “I am taking him under my protection as a precautionary measure.”

“Protection from what?”

“Well.” He considered whether he should say anything at all, and eventually decided that it was strategically useful. “There was a peculiar accident…”

He conveyed the entire story, conveniently omitting close to a dozen missed calls on his part, and taking several side-quests, roundabouts, and dead-ends on the way. Lilly listened attentively while somehow also managing to ignore about 80% of what he was saying. Her attitude only changed towards the end.

“…and considering that the summerhouse was robbed, I am now investigating the possibility that the music box was stolen as well.”

“The… music box?” Lilly looked as if she had unexpectedly swallowed a whole live toad. “Is that… is the music box the thing you were searching for in Roger’s office?”

“That’s why I was hired.” Dirk nodded. “Forget the music box though! We have mysterious silhouettes and mad electricity and a whole bag of other unexplained events!” He was visibly giddy with excitement. “That’s the priority.”

“And Roger’s also in danger,” Lilly added.

“And he’s in danger.” Dirk had to force himself physically back into the serious tone. “And in fact I should probably go check up on him.”

“Yeah I have, uh, things. As well. Young people things,” Lilly muttered. “Tiktak dance. Veeping. The coffee machine in the faculty room is clogged too. So bye.”

“Bye!” Dirk waved at her, but she was already gone. “Huh. What a strange girl…” he murmured, walking in the direction of the institute entrance.

  
Two minutes later, and Lilly was rushing from one place to another, in a manner that very much reminded her of undergrads waking up one horrible morning and remembering that they had a term paper due in five hours. 

“Damn, blast, triple damn with an extra side order of damn!” she yelled at no-one in particular. “I am screwed. We’re all screwed. They really are here already and I am so fucking screwed!”

She knew she had to leave at once, and she also knew that the place would deteriorate beyond recognition in her absence, and surprisingly that rather stung. For the most part, she hated the institute and everything about it. However, she still remembered a time when she loved it with her entire heart, and that alone was enough to make her hesitate. 

Alas, she had no right to hesitate anymore. Things were getting far too serious.

Lilly spent a few hours preparing the institute for the worst, which was her not being there to take care of it. She instructed all other cleaner staff, set up auto-watering systems for some of the potted plants, provided a month supply of coffee, sugar, tea, and creamer in the faculty rooms, and changed all the bulbs in the building just in case. Finding temporary homes for the cats was the worst. She managed with all except one - the black, green-eyed cat.

“No one wants you, Erwin.” Lilly sighed. “Stupid superstitious humans. Oh well.” She shrugged. “Guess I’m going on the run with a cat.”

She gave one last look to her cabinet. It wasn’t really a cabinet, but rather a utility closet - but she called it her cabinet anyway, because it made her feel better. She then packed her bag with her scarce possessions:

A wallet with a single credit card and lose change. A few physics textbooks, including “The Feynman Lectures on Physics” and “Modern Quantum Mechanics”. Some snacks. A half-empty bag of dry cat food. An completely empty metal flask. A small cosmetics bag, filled mostly with tissues and hand cream. A notebook. A pack of assorted colour ball pens. A tiny photo album full of polaroids. And, last but not least, a small, dainty music box decorated with brass vines and leaves…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am magically managing to stick to my schedule and writing 500-1000 words daily so i am now switching to posting twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday
> 
> i won't promise to stick to it till the end though, cause i might have more work in grad school in November. if that will be the case i will scale it back to once a week


	15. Chapter 15

Moonlight slithered across the road like a lazy overfed jellyfish, its tentacle rays breaching through cracks in the thick layer of clouds. The night air was crispy fresh, shiny and transparent like glass. The branches of trees that surrounded the road did not dare move, and the whole scene seemed motionless and serene, like a still image from a dark, thoughtful movie. 

Or it was motionless and serene at least, right until they ran out of gas.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Amanda was smiling, but it was not a smile of happiness. It was a smile of someone who was ready to bite the universe itself, and kick the universe’s shin too for good measure.

“There’s a gas station!” Vogel yelped.

“Where?” Amanda asked.

“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “Somewhere. It’s a road, there’s a gas station at some point!”

“Thank you Vogel that was very. helpful!” Amanda produced another severely sarcastic smile. “I swear to Satan, if we don’t make it somewhere today, there will be Blood, and I don’t know whose blood it will be but there will be blood.”

Luckily for the blood of all inhabitants of the van, a neon sign lit up on the horizon five minutes later, prompting Amanda to let out a breath that she wasn’t aware she was holding. She rolled the van into the empty gas station, killed the engine, and jumped out onto the cold asphalt.

The 2am sky was shrouded in heavy silver clouds, moonlight brushing her skin with its cold touch. She allowed herself one brief and very slight grin, then shook it off. They were on the run. They were also out of gas. She needed to hurry.

  
Upon entering the tiny gas station shop, Amanda marched straight towards the checkout without even looking around, in spite of her active and very hungry subconscious begging her to pay attention to all the sugary abominations surrounding her.

“Fill up a full tank of diesel at the second please,” Amanda muttered through a yawn, speaking to the girl who worked the counter. “Also this,” she added, grabbing a handful of candy bars at random and slamming them on the checkout table.

“That will be 38.75,” the girl responded after scanning the candy bars and typing in some numbers.

“Ah.”

This is when Amanda remembered that she didn’t have 38.75 dollars. In fact, she did not have dollars.

Money ownership was not a subject of concern for the Rowdy 3. They rarely needed anything, and when they did, they could just as easily steal it directly instead of stealing money first to purchase it. Due to this fact, Amanda was tasked with keeping track of finances, mostly for supplying herself with food, meds, and hostel rooms whenever she needed a proper bath and a calm night. The source of the money was somewhat ambiguous; she was not quite sure herself where it came from, but she was usually at least able to keep track of it.

That was not the case in this particular moment.

This moment was characterized by Amanda realizing suddenly that she gave away her last five dollars of cash when buying a much needed coffee that afternoon. She had credit cards - seven of them - but each was either broken, invalid, or eaten by a feral raccoon. 

“Hey so, uh, do you take Walmart coupons?” Amanda asked.

The girl hesitated, trying to pick an appropriate response for what she thought was a badly executing though mildly amusing joke, and eventually settled on a meek giggle.

“I also have like,” Amanda searched her pockets frantically, “I have 25 cents and half a pack of life savers,” she declared. “And that’s it.”

“Sorry we don’t take candy as payment.” The girl smiled, still not entirely convinced that this wasn’t some elaborate though rather sad attempt at a late night comedy monologue. 

“Hey, listen,” Amanda said, channeling all of her normalcy and politeness which, admittedly, she didn’t have a lot of. “I really, really need that gas. I am in some serious trouble and I have people relying on me and we need to get away a.s.a.p. I swear I have money somewhere, on a bank account, whatever. I’ll find a way to get it back to you, but I need the gas. And the candy too actually, I haven’t eaten anything since morning.”

“Oh-kay.” The girl’s eyebrows were now firmly raised. “So I don’t know you, uh…”

“Amanda.”

“…Amanda, nice to meet you, I’m Tamika by the way,” she pointed at her badge with a short, sloppily painted fingernail, “I don’t know you and your life but for me, forty dollars is a lot of money. I work minimum wage. At a gas station. I have my budget down to a penny and forty bucks is more than five days worth of food for me. And that’s how much my boss will take out of my salary if I give you gas and candy for free cause that’s how much your gas and candy costs. Like almost a week worth of my food.”

Amanda took a very deep breath in. She glanced over her shoulder back at the van and felt viscerally the cortisol leaving her adrenal glands, escaping into her bloodstream, and being pumped directly into her brain like a midnight express off its rails.

“I know,” Amanda said. “It’s just that, and you won’t believe me so I’ve no idea why I’m telling you this, but when I am called to be somewhere, I absolutely have to start moving in the direction of that bloody somewhere, and quick. I can’t explain it but it’s true.”

“I do believe you, actually,” Tamika replied unexpectedly. “No idea why either. And, well, I’ve seen the people in your van. You outnumber me. You can rob this place, get your gas and leave, but…” And she smirked, leaving Amanda even more confused than before. “Something tells me you won’t do that.”

“What do you want?” Amanda guessed.

“I am bored,” Tamika told her. “Like, really bored. I also have half a bottle of tequila, so… stay for an hour and have a drink with me?” She asked. “Bonus points if you have interesting stories to tell and, again, judging by that van of yours, you do.”

“When I said I was in a hurry, I meant it, dude,” Amanda said.

“Yeah I know. But it’s either rob me and leave right now, or have a drink with me and I pay for your gas and your Twix bars too.”

Amanda closed her eyes for a second, considering her options. She imagined the aftermath of unleashing the Rowdy 3 at the place, and thought of the catastrophic though somewhat entertaining consequences of that. It wouldn’t be the girl’s fault if the place was reduced to the state of matter and gravity immediately after the big bang, but the probability that she’d keep her job after it was slim regardless. 

Did they have an hour? She knew they were being followed, but her intuition was stubbornly assuring her that they had a long way towards catching up. And what would an hour do anyway? Perhaps the universe even wanted her to have this conversation… oh but did she have to decide? Why was she always the one to decide?!

“Fine,” Amanda gave up. “But I sure hope it’s good tequila.”

*

They sat in the dark staff room at the back of the shop, forced into physical closeness through the necessity of sharing a tiny, barely furnished space. The room was geometrically awkward and scarcely lit. The only objects here, apart from some lockers, were a round metal table that had seen better days, and a few plastic chairs that were more suitable for toddlers at daycare. Currently, Amanda was sited opposite Tamika on one such plastic chair, staring down her half-full glass. She didn’t realize how much she needed a drink before she drained her first portion in one big, almost painful gulp.

“Well you’re certainly drinking.” Tamika laughed, already pouring her a second glass and taking a sip from her own. “Anything in particular you want to talk about?”

“So recently I’ve been thinking a lot about which decision was my first in a very long path towards the shit I am in now,” Amanda replied, “I guess we can go with that.”

“Damn. Go on then.”

“Yeah so I think I’ve triangulated it to like, two, or maybe three events. Three, actually.”

“You can start with the first one then,” Tamika suggested.

“Sounds good,” Amanda agreed, and took another sip. “So I was 14, and…”

  
…sneaking out of her house without telling her parents for the first time in her life.

She remembered shivering at the backseat of Roy Seymour’s car, and Katie Lewis offering her a swig of some drink that belonged in a garage or a cleaner’s cupboard rather than a flask. They barely made it to the concert that day. Her own brother’s big show, and she almost missed it. In that moment, being on first row of the Mexican Funeral gig seemed like the most important thing in the world to her, even though…

  
“Your brother was in a band?” Tamika asked incredulously.

“Yeah.”

“Like a for real serious band?”

“Just google him.” Amanda sighed. “Todd Brotzman, Mexican Funeral.”

“Oh damn he got a wikipedia page,” Tamika announced, scrolling through her phone. “And he’s your brother?”

“Why the hell would I lie to you?!” Amanda snorted with laughter. “He’s not that cool. Also he’s an asshole. Kind of. He is trying not to be though.”

“Difficult relationship there, ey?” Tamika teased in what she hoped was a playful, i-am-sort-of-flirting-with-you-but-only-if-you-want-it-to-be-flirting way.

“You can say that.” Amanda shrugged with a smile.

“Did he steal your girlfriend?”

“He pretended to have a rare disease for years and took a shitton of money from our parents and then continued to lie to me about recovering from that disease after I got it for real and also lied about basically everything until he was forced to tell me the truth,” she said. “Though he also kind of saved me from being stuck in a magical kingdom a few months ago so he is redeemable I guess.”

“Excuse me what?”

“Stick a knife in that. No. Wait.” Amanda shook her head. “What am I saying… a pin! Stick a pin in that, that’s not important right now. The important point is…”

  
…that she saw them on that day, for the first time - punks. A bunch of young people, who seemed very grownup to a fourteen year old but were probably in their very early thirties, hanging out together outside the club. She fell in love with every single one of them on first sight. Fell in love with their leather jackets, torn jeans and heavy boots; with the spikes and pins sticking out of their ears, eyebrows, and lips; with their bright hair and shaved heads and countless badges on sleeves and lapels.

But most of all, she fell in love with their baseball bats.

She asked them what they had those bats for, and they said, “for beating up nazis, of course”, and she believed them, of course, because they had the air and vibe of evil-fighters and unbelievable bad-asses. Amanda had seen punks before - mostly her brother, and mostly on his posters - but this was the first time she got to stand near them and talk to them and realize just what they had, and it was freedom.

Freedom she craved more than anything else. Freedom she didn’t even dare to dream about, but decided in that moment to spend the rest of her life pursuing. Freedom she would never get, not ever, and especially after she was diagnosed with pararibulitis.

  
“Pararibulitis?” Tamika asked. “Isn’t that what that writer, whatshisface, Winchester something had?”

“Everyone mentions George bloody Winchester to me!” Amanda winced, as if an unsavory memory was brought to her mind. “And like, dude spent most of his life in his basement writing books. Not a very exciting life. Also I suck at writing.”

“It’s also a nasty disease,” Tamika added. 

“It is.”

“My cousin has epilepsy, which, you know, not as painful I bet, but pretty similar mechanisms, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well she doesn’t leave home much either.”

“I was stuck at home for years,” Amanda said. “It’s not even that I couldn’t leave, I just didn’t feel like I was allowed to. Every time I had an attack outside of my house, eugh. I’ve actually convinced myself that I was such an inconvenience to society, I deserved to be locked up and hidden from view.”

“Big yikes,” all that Tamika managed to say.

“Yep. Cheers.”

They drank again.

“You didn’t stay at home though.” Tamika smiled.

“No.” Amanda smiled back.

“So what happened?”

“Ah. Well. What happened is a walking human disaster called…”

  
…Dirk Gently, who only ever does as much as appear in other people’s lives without warning and transform them violently into something you wouldn’t hallucinate under magic mushrooms even if you tried. Dirk Gently, who got her out of her house for the first time in years. Then the Rowdy 3 that came after him, and reminded her that joy and happiness were indeed real things and not fictions invented by the pharmaceutical companies to sell you drugs.

These people, too improbable to be fake, arrived in her world and somehow persuaded her that freedom was not something that she had to earn - it was something she could just claim for herself. And she decided to do just that.

“So let me recap,” Tamika said through a laugh, “some guy broke into your brother’s apartment, got him involved in some mad scheme that involved soul swapping and time travel, and introduced you to a gang of punk psychic vampires in a van…”

“…the vampires introduced themselves,” Amanda corrected.

“…and then you were on the run from a secret agency and saved by a witch from a magical dimension where you were taught how to change reality with your mind.”

“I never actually learned how to change reality outside of Wendimoor,” Amanda confessed unexpectedly even for herself.

She felt high on emotions; this was the first time she dared share about her life with a total stranger, and it felt like scratching an itch on the inside of her brain that she didn’t know bothered her for months.

“Did you manage to control your visions?”

“Sort of, I guess.” Amanda shrugged. “I separated them from attacks. I don’t need the Rowdy to induce them. Now they sort of happen, as in sometimes I get in this zone and I can bring them on, with effort, and sometimes they just happen and don’t ask me. And I almost never get attacks anymore. At least much, much rarer than I used to.” She paused for a second. “I wonder how Todd is coping.”

“Right,” Tamika said. “Is that where you’re going? To see your brother?”

“Yes and no?” Amanda replied. “So what happened is…”

  
…she started having visions of the universe falling apart a while ago. She ignored them at first, assuming that she was misinterpreting some great big metaphor about how she was trying to exert too much control over her life and needed to let things progress of their own accord or some other such holistic nonsense. But gradually the visions because less flowery and metaphoric and more, as Dirk would put it, kill-y. 

They began to feature an awful lot of blood puddles and empty skulls, as if the visions made a brand deal with the producer of halloween decorations and had to start including them in every edition.

This is when Amanda decided that she should start paying attention, and began to follow their lead, grabbing onto the tiniest of details she could identify. It forced the Rowdy to drive around all over the place for a while, and it was fun at first. That’s what Rowdys did before the met Amanda - just went whenever they felt like. Except now, with Amanda on board, things were starting to get less fun and more gravely dangerous, culminating in whatever what was happening to them now. 

Now, all they could do was…

  
“…run.” Amanda swallowed a knot in her throat and immediately reached for tequila. “I just, I don’t fucking get it, right, but I just know I have to get to Dirk and ignore everything else and tell him this stuff! It’s so stupid!” She groaned in frustration. “Stupid and mad and infuriating. And you know what’s the worst thing? They think I know shit.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of the van. “They think I’m now this wise witch connected to all of creation or whatever and I’m not. I’m terrified.” She laughed, almost through tears. “I am scared literally all the time and I have no clue what I am doing. You know I found that damned key?”

“You what?!” Tamika thought she couldn’t be surprised by anything by now, but clearly she was mistaken.

“Yeah, found it in the van almost immediately, and, hell.” Amanda waved around herslef. “Just didn’t tell anyone.”

“But you can just give it away to that Slavic mafia of yours and be fine!”

“I can’t. I feel like I can’t. I feel, you know, I feel like I need to hold on to it and bring it to Dirk. And I hate it but that’s what I’m doing. I’m bringing it to Dirk and that’s it.”

There was a pause, in which they drank, and sighed, and looked at each other in understanding.

“You’ll figure it out.” Tamika smiled.

“You couldn’t possibly know.” Amanda raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah I do. Somehow. Like you know what you’re supposed to do.”

“Do you even believe at least a word of what I’ve said?”

“Honestly,” Tamika smirked, “I can’t come up wit a reason for why you’d make this up. Trust me I’ve been bullshitted enough in my life and I know a daring lie from ridiculous truth. When you lie, see,” she said with a knowing look, “you try to make it believable.”

“Right.” Amanda laughed. “God… thank you for the drink. Seriously.”

She got up from the table, realizing she was somehow almost completely sober. Same couldn’t be said for Tamika, who had to struggle to weasel out of the tight spot in between the table and the wall.

“Hour’s up,” Amanda said, with just a pinch of sadness in her voice.

“I’ll fill up your gas.” Tamika nodded. “Also.” She reached into her pocket and extracted a crumpled piece of paper, on which she then scribbled some numbers with the help of a half-dry pen she found on the floor. “Hope you can read that.”

“Your number?” Amanda asked with a smile.

“You’ll have to repay me somehow, right?” Tamika reminded. “Can be over drinks, some time after you save the world again.”

“It can,” Amanda replied. “One more reason to make it out of this mess alive.”

Ten minutes later, the van was back on the road, Tamika was back to her counter, and one phone network signal was online again to the utter delight of one man named Dancho.

“And we’re back.” He beamed ear to ear, though no one shared his enthusiasm. “That’s right baby, I can build devices that work for more than a day.”

“Yeah you can,” Varya snorted, “you can make device that work for two whole days.”

“Shush,” he told her. “I am tracking. Yes, baby, yes…”

“Oh just marry your black box already.” Milena rolled her eyes.

“Got it!” Dancho ignored her. “Sweet. Very sweet.”

“What?” Grazyna demanded.

“We haven’t fallen behind too much,” Dancho explained. “In fact, by my calculations, I think we’ll catch up with them tomorrow evening…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if those gas to dollars to days worth of food calculations were not accurate, i apologize - i tried to approximate it with some googling but fuck knows, i don't live in the US so i've no idea whether it's anywhere close to truth
> 
> also as usual, comments and kudos are highly appreciated, and you are free to speculate on the mystery and ask me for very vague confirmation/denial sort of replies ^^


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again warning for mild psychological horror

Unlike most mercenaries, Orson was not very good at working under pressure.

In fact, there were very few things in life he despised more than deadlines and strict schedules. They reminded him of his brief time in college - a joyful, carefree period of building skill and getting to know people (professionally and sexually) for most, a century long semester filled with exam dread and sleepless nights for Orson. He shuddered standing at the bus stop just remembering it.

Unfortunately, most jobs that were available to Orson contained a few things he viciously hated at the lowest, and some consisted entirely of things that the vast majority of people despised, and were commonly referred to as “minimum wage” or “low skill”. And if Orson had to pick one word to describe himself, it would be “low skill”, which was actually two words, though that hardly mattered.

“Not that I have a choice,” Orson thought, and listed all other things he hated in his mind while paying for his bus ticket. Generally, Orson wasn’t a very hateful person, but he definitely had his moments. He hated long lines at the grocery store, and itchy sweaters, and unskippable adds, and especially the greasy film that formed on milk when you heated it up to make a cup of cocoa. Also deadlines. Orson really, really couldn’t stand deadlines.

He knew that the work of a mercenary entailed some occasional dabbling in deadlines, but before the previous evening, he hadn’t quite had the chance to process what it would mean for him. Submitting a paper that he really rather wished he could work a bit longer on was one thing; getting murdered over a failed merc task was another.

Strangely, the possibility of death’s cold embrace didn’t scare him nearly as much as the disapproval of his college professors. Sure, this situation was already quite bad. In fact, it was catastrophically bad and with plenty of promise to get much worse if the opportunity presented itself, and it almost certainly would. And sure, he now had less than three days to sneak up on his target and use the device that he didn’t even know the purpose of by pressing it directly to their chest for twenty whole seconds. But Orson tried to see positives in everything, and he did see a positive in his current predicament:

At least Mr. Reynolds wouldn’t grade him on it.

Upon arriving on sight, Orson quickly navigated to the right building, entered it under the guise of delivering takeout, and made his way to the right floor. He lurked around the floor for a while, taking notice of every apartment. None of the doors made his spidey-sense tingle, so he found the least conspicuous spot around and made himself practically invisible. 

He couldn’t actually make himself invisible, of course. What he could was assume the role of a deeply uninteresting man that you would automatically avoid if you were to run into them at a party, and that was close enough. 

Eventually, after two hours of playing words with friends on his phone, the wait paid off. One of the doors opened, and, to Orson’s surprise, he saw his target, dressed in a suit and guarded by a woman that seemed anxious and unstoppable at the same time.

“Shit,” Orson muttered under his breath as they walked past him without even batting an eye.

Now, he had two options - either follow the target out of the building, or stay here and wait for them to come back. Either way, he would start to attract attention quite soon, as his spell of pretending to be a strikingly realistic mannequin would begin to wear off. Unless…

Orson’s mind was in the process of separating from his body, leaving him to fend off for himself without a guidebook or a farewell. He wanted to be anywhere; on a sunny beach in California, in a ballpit at Chuck-e-Cheese, in the empty warehouse of an abandoned Costco store… anywhere but here. But instead of bringing him to a safe place, his legs brought him to the entrance of That Apartment, and his hand knocked on it to boot.

And to his complete and utter horror, someone answered.

Orson stood on the threshold, panicking all over but in his liver and left occipital lobe of the brain in particular, trying to figure out whether he ever had a strategy to begin with. The door was about to open, and from that second he would have approximately four seconds more to come up with a reason for knocking. The lock clicked. Orson pinched his leg through the fabric of his trousers, and…

“Todd Brotzman from the Mexican Funeral?” Orson said.

Todd, who was not in the mood for dealing with his past, took a deep breath in.

“Yes?” he gave up.

“I…” Orson began. “No, no, I’m not going to lie, khm. I’m not a fan,” he admitted. “Sorry. I used to be, kind of, but I’m more into indie and progressive with just a dash of punk now. Uhm. Yes. I definitely know how you are though?”

“Oh, that’s totally fine.” Todd breathed a sigh of relief. “I love progressive too. Also power metal. So,” he said. “Anything you needed?”

“Right!” Orson laughed. “Shoot. Sorry. Yeah, I was going to ask whether you have time to hear me ramble about a candidate to the local council for a bit, I’m gathering signatures and, uh, yes, you know, saw you and lost my train of thought. God I hate this job.” He laughed nervously again. “I am usually very good at talking to people! Today’s just really not my day.”

“Hey, man,” Todd wasn’t quite sure why he was saying it, but there was something in his brain telling him that this tall lanky creature needed a cup of tea and a few hours of rest, “if your work isn’t really urgent, you can come in, have some drinks with me. Tell me about that candidate of yours. Though I’d prefer if you talked about the progressive scene.”

“Uhm, yes. Yeah. Sure.” Orson smiled. “Tea sounds great.”

“Come in then.” Todd invited. “It’s not like I have anything to do.”

*

Todd experienced a series of increasingly confusing thoughts as he boiled the kettle and began to realize that he had just invited a complete stranger into his house for tea. This was perfectly normal behavior for Dirk, who was known for bringing in all kinds of people, pets, and supernatural entities over for tea. But Todd, on the other hand, was a distrustful, borderline paranoid introvert. And whatever had compelled him to do such a thing was a big, capital letter M Mystery.

“There you go,” Todd commented, placing a cup of green tea in front of Orson, and going back to the kitchen counter to brew himself some coffee. “So, uh,” he began, once again perplexed at his own words, “you seem kinda troubled. What’s that about?”

“Oh, pff.” Orson breathed in the smell of the steaming tea.

He closed his eyes for a second, tuning in to Todd’s mind and personality. Orson had always had a talent for mirroring people somehow - peering into their soul like a very observant and mildly magical owl. 

“Well,” Orson began. “I am an adult man with no idea what I’m doing with my life at this point. I feel like I can never escape my past mistakes no matter how much I strive to be a better person. I worry all the time that I will alienate all my friends and have to be alone again. And I also think that all my romantic relationships inevitably fall apart exclusively because of me.”

“Mm,” Todd said.

He felt his eyebrows climb steadily up his forehead at constant velocity and had to force them physically to climb back down.

“You ever feel like that?” Orson asked.

And that’s when Todd decided that he needed some whiskey in his coffee.

  
An hour and a half later, and Todd had the impression that he had just crammed two years of psychotherapy into one long and exhausting but enlightening morning. He was there telling Orson about his first girlfriend and time in college as if they were best friends since kindergarten when the door clicked open and Kevin rushed inside with two heavy bags hanging on each of his shoulders.

“We’re having tsatsivi tonight!” he announced loudly from the threshold. “It’s a Georgian dish, you’ll love it!”

“We had to visit five different shops to find the right variety of walnut,” Farah added, walking in after Kevin. “Did you know that walnuts have varieties?”

Neither Todd nor Orson had an opportunity to answer the question, because Kevin took the scene by grasping at his chest dramatically and falling over onto the couch.

“Oh seriously?” Farah exclaimed, nevertheless rushing to help Kevin. “Are you okay?”

“Just a heart thing,” Kevin explained. “Pass me over my meds.”

Back at the kitchen, Orson was now visibly sweating.

“Don’t worry, it’s just my girlfriend and the guy she’s guarding,” Todd explained. “Wait here for a bit, I’ll go talk to her.”

By the time Todd got to the living room, Kevin was already breathing slower, and sipping water from a tall glass.

“I’m fine now,” Kevin assured them both. “I’m fine.”

“Hey, Todd,” Farah said, glancing at Kevin every now and then just in case he was about to pass out again. “Can I talk to you for a second? In the bedroom. In private. Cause Dirk called me and…”

“Sure.” Todd nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

  
Orson listened to the exchange from the kitchen, his heart now pounding out of his chest even faster than Kevin’s. He reached into his bag and pulled out the device that bosses have provided him with. It was a solid block of black plastic, vaguely resembling a bloated walkie-talkie. He peered into the living room; his target was sprawled out on the couch like a napping walrus, defenseless, and the other two people in the apartment where on the other side of it. The conditions were perfect, and he only needed the twenty seconds.

He took a deep breath in, bit his lip and walked into the living room, the device hidden behind his back.

“Oh, hello.” Kevin waved from the couch. “Don’t mind me. I’m just laying down and waiting for my meds to kick in.”

“No problemo.” Orson smiled politely. 

“Are you a friend of Todd’s?”

“Actually we’ve just met. But I used to like his music a lot.”

“He never told me he writes music!” Kevin exclaimed. “How humble of him.”

“I guess.” Orson shrugged.

His small intestine was currently playing tag with itself, wrapping around his organs and making him feel like he was about to cough up his own lung. He was hesitating. Why was he hesitating? The bosses had said that the device would temporarily neutralize everyone in sight, leaving him ample time to escape. What did the thing do though?! Would it kill this guy? Was he really about to commit murder?

“Please can someone just come in and ruin this for me?” Orson begged in his mind, but alas, no one did.

He gave himself five more seconds to decide, then suddenly became aware of his tongue and lips producing sounds that he was sure meant something in English, he wouldn’t know, since the ability to comprehend English had been temporarily taken away from him as if he forgot to pay for the subscription.

“I better go,” Orson’s mouth said. “Seems like Todd’s, uh, busy.”

“Was very nice to meet you!” Kevin grinned. “Come over again if you like, I’m always cooking something.”

“Sure. Sure,” Orson mumbled.

He then stumbled out of the apartment, almost crawled down the steps, collapsed into the nearby bush and produced one prolonged sob. His hand found his phone in the pocket of his jeans, extracted it from the pocket, and dialed a number through shaky fingers.

“Yes?” an irritated metallic voice asked at the other end.

“I quit,” Orson breathed out into the phone, then turned it off, threw it into the garbage, and laid down on the grass where he remained quietly and completely still for the next three hours.

*

Orson knew that he was certainly, definitively dead when he tried to come back home that night. After his three hour lie-down, he spent another five hours in a Starbucks, cramming various caffeinated liquids into himself and frantically making edits to his last will. He needed to make sure that his mother would be okay no matter what. 

At the back of his mind, he was still managing to persuade himself that this was a precaution, and that he had a way out of this gigantic mess. At the front of his mind though, he was perfectly lucid and understanding of the simple facts of life. Being fired as a mercenary didn’t just mean another ugly point on his CV. He was done. Everything was over.

Nevertheless, he put his best foot forward in trying to escape. He got rid of all his things, including the device, through the means of pushing them forcefully through a pothole and into the sewers. He did his best to disguise himself and hopped from bus to tram to another bus, until he was ready to leave Seattle altogether. He paid for everything in cash and made himself invisible whenever possible, hoping beyond all reason that the bosses had better things to do than track him down.

That much was true: bosses were, indeed, incredibly busy, and not of a habit of carrying out menial tasks themselves. Unfortunately, the bosses were also considerably petty.

He was standing in a dark spot a few hundred meters from the bus station, away from people and street lamps. He could still see the road from there, and the neon lights of a nearby shop to his left. That is how he knew when they arrived. First, the cars stopped passing by. Then the neon lights went pop.

“I told you that I quit,” Orson said.

He knew they were standing right behind him even before they ever made a sound.

“You can’t just quit this, you pathetic moron,” someone replied, and with a shudder Orson realized that they were still speaking in that metallic, distorted voice. “You messed this up, Orson. Messed it up real good, and by that I mean it is very, very bad.”

“And I also know too much, bla bla,” Orson guessed with a constrained laugh. “I figured.”

“Actually you know jack shit,” the other voice replied. “But you are too inconvenient to leave alone without neutralizing.”

“Well.” Orson sighed. “I tried my best.”

And he turned around slowly on the spot. Opposite him, somehow both several miles away and at an arm’s length, stood a tall, disproportionate silhouette shrouded in a thick gleaming fabric. It was as black as the background except for the helmet, which was burning white and making Orson’s eyes water. The figure had its hand on a device - the same device Orson was supposed to use on his target - and it was pointed firmly at Orson.

“I’m sorry,” Orson muttered, as reality fell apart around him and consciousness slowly floated away from his brain.

His body thumbed heavily against the cold concrete.

“Like they say - if you want something done,” one of the bosses told the other, “do it yourselves.”

The other agreed, and they disappeared into darkness, unnoticed and ignored.

  
A few dozen meters away, Orson’s bus had just left without him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some time in the next few weeks i will start going back to the previous chapters and changing the dialogue punctuation to standard American
> 
> my aesthetic preference is still the European dashes, but i have now heard a few times that it is an accesibility issue (e.g. for screen readers) and i want to make this story more accessible 
> 
> so don't be surprised if the next chapter will look a bit different all of a sudden ^^


	17. Chapter 17

Black Wing Facility Gamma resided in an abandoned psychiatric hospital and, despite being repeatedly repaired, renovated and refurnished, carried from its past an air of stiffness and sterilized anxiety. There simply was something psychiatric-hospital about it that no amount of beige paint and IKEA chairs could possibly remedy. 

Perhaps it was the fact that, much like patients in far too many psychiatric hospitals, the residents of this facility were not treated as people but rather as mutant lab mice. Their “handlers” - prison guards - could be fascinated with them, or scared of them, or disgusted with them; they could treat them with caution or pity or distaste, but one thing was forever unattainable to the subjects, and it was something reserved only for fellow humans: 

respect.

  
A day in Black Wing was excruciatingly slow and controlled. They were all waken up at the same time with a siren, after which a nutritionally complete but mostly joyless breakfast was served in their rooms. Plates were always taken away half an hour later. If food still remained in them, it was taken away along with the plates. 

The morning was filled with strictly controlled and monitored activities; projects were tested, experimented on and studied. They completed assignments and carried out research tasks, and their say in what they were comfortable with was limited. For Bart, who had special privileges, this also meant being taken on missions every now and then outside of Black Wing. She spent the rest of her time in the basement, where trained soldiers amused themselves with various scientific-sounding activities, such as throwing knifes at her while recording how long it took her to detect and dodge them.

In the afternoon there was lunch, taken like breakfast in their rooms and alone, then occasionally a meeting with a psychologist or a research assistant. Throughout the day, the projects’ behaviour was assessed and scored according to a template. If that behaviour met a certain criteria, the projects were allowed to spend a few hours in the common room, socializing with each other under mild supervision. And this was the only thing that gave Bart meaning.

  
On Tuesday evening, she was escorted into the common room by two armed guards as per usual. The guards were terrified of Bart and she knew it, which allowed her to squeeze out some more special treatment in the form of carrying a handbag with her - a cheap, bright red plastic thing with glitter on it. As always, they winced a little as they unlocked the door for her and gently pushed her in. This gesture was akin to inexperienced zoo keepers throwing meat into a cage full of lions - it filled them with both awe and utter primordial horror.

“What’s up bitches,” Bart announced loudly on entrance.

The majority of the group ignored her, with the exception of one - a tall, freckled woman with a head full of fiery red hair, dressed in clothes of so many colors, even a shrimp would not be able to distinguish and name them all.

“Hi baby!” The woman beamed, patting the bench she was sitting on. “I love your hairstyle.”

Bart, who did not have a hairstyle and had simply gotten her hair tangled in a different pattern that day, thanked her for the compliment nonetheless.

“Hi, Corey,” Bart greeted, and fell into the seat with a heavy thud. “What did the tea say today?”

“The tea said that I am on a creative streak,” Corey explained, “and that I should pay more attention to my dreams. It also said that you will bring me interesting news today, so.” She smiled coyly. “I’m all years.”

  
Corey Amethyst, who was known outside of Black Wing by a variety of names which were on a similarly profound level of both beautiful and fake, was a trained tarot reader, tea leaf diviner, a psychic, a clairaudient, and a witch.

She was also a flower shop girl by the day, but that was a far less interesting fact of her life that she preferred to keep secret.

Like many professional tarot readers, Corey excelled at the ability to produce a string of pleasant-sounding generalized statements and pinpoint the tiniest reactions of her client to carry on the reading in the right direction. She was also outstanding at creating a certain atmosphere and a particular aesthetic which made you so open to ideas, you would be ready to accept that you were your own great-grand-aunt.

Unlike almost all professional tarot readers, Corey was, in fact, a real diviner - a holistic diviner, to be precise. What that meant is that she considered someone’s story as a whole, no insignificant details set aside. As a result, she could with astonishing clarity see completely true but also microscopic and seemingly irrelevant snippets of people’s past, present, and future. For example, Corey could accurately determine what you had for breakfast three months ago, which part of you face was itching at this very moment, and what will be the middle name of your future wife’s mother.

She had no control over it, of course; in most reading, she relied on less holistic, more traditional methods. Few people needed to know, even with total accuracy, whether they ought to take an umbrella with them exactly forty two days later.

Nevertheless, Black Wing found Corey’s ability profoundly useful. Small details were pointless to one person, but on a large scale and with the help of massive data processing algorithms, each spec meant something. It also elevated Black Wing’s status to a new level of respect. Just last week, through one tiny piece of knowledge of one man’s exact day of having a terrible migraine, the CIA was able to stage a coup and overturn the Bolivian government.

Not that Corey knew about that. She just knew that the migraine she divined would never occur again for that particular man.

  
“Your tea leaves lie.” Bart smirked. “I don’t have news… only the useless bullshit that Ken tells me. I also have this,” she added, and emptied the contents of her red bag onto the floor in front of her.

The contents contained several Oreo packaging butterflies, two fun-size bounty bars, a jar of glitter, a plastic knife, a pack of chewing gum, and, finally, a whole deck of DIY tarot cards.

“A gift,” Bart proclaimed, handing over the deck to Corey.

“You didn’t!” Corey squealed in excitement.

She grabbed the deck and began to sort through it with a quick, well-trained motion of her fingers. Each card was drawn meticulously by hand and colored in crayons; the symbolism was only vaguely inspired by a Rider-Wait deck, but it spoke to Corey all the same, if not better.

“These are gorgeous,” Corey said. “Thank you, Bart.” She glanced at her friend, eyes full of love and appreciation. “They only give me cards when I am doing the tasks for them.”

“These are yours. To keep.”

“I will do a spread for you,” Corey decided, making herself comfortable on the seat.

“Wait,” Bart stopped her. “I have a thing first. Not an interesting thing but I’ll ask. Have you ever heard of a Project Prometheus?”

Corey shook her head in response. “But there is something going on here lately,” she added. “Supervisor Adams is away a lot, and everyone seems… tense. More stressed than usual.”

“He isn’t stressed,” Bart disagreed. “He’s… excited. And that means someone’s about to have not good things happen to them,” she explained. “And it could be me happening to them. Wait.”

Bart raised herself from the seat and regarded the common room like a predator surveying the open savanna. She wasn’t friends with these people; most of them were too terrified to even talk to her, but, there was one thing they gave her that she never got from any of the Black Wing employees: respect.

“Ever heard of project Prometheus?” Bart asked in a hushed whisper, going from one person to the next.

She knew they were being watched, but she also knew that the guards did not have a single fuck to give about what they talked about, and that made her feel safe and confident, like a shark in familiar waters but with less unwanted publicity from wildlife photographers. Unfortunately, this yielded few results. Most people just flinched, shrugged, and asked her to leave - roughly in that order.

The only person she actually got a conversation out of was James, but that was hardly surprising and more of an unfortunate side-effect rather than the intended outcome. 

Before he was discovered by Black Wing through a combination of gossip and Twitter inquiries, James was a holistic psychotherapist. What set him apart from others in his profession was a unique, uncanny ability to detect lies in all forms - including lies that the patients were telling themselves. This made him severely effective, but also meant that 99% of his clients quit on first session. Not many could deal with a person who knew more about them than they did themselves. 

James was incredibly useful to Black Wing as a reliable human lie detector and an elegant interrogation and/or torture tool. This time he had succeeded in dragging Bart into a half an hour long discussion about her goals and values in life and she exited the conversation even more confused than she was at the beginning. He also did not know anything about project Prometheus.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bart said upon returning to the bench next to Corey. “Doesn’t change it.”

“Change what?”

“It will be our best shot,” she explained and beamed, delighted just thinking about it.

“No-no-no, mon ami.” Corey frowned. “Way too early! We need much more people on our side before we can strike out.”

“We have me,” Bart disagreed. “That’s the most important. We also have you. And James.” She pointed at the man who did not know what he was in on, but was prepared to do anything to save himself from boredom. “A few more people and it’s good.”

Corey sighed. Then she sighed again for good measure and pulled out the self-made deck.

“Let’s ask the cards,” she suggested, and turned to face Bart. “Meditate with me. Let’s concentrate our energy.”

Bart did not tell Corey this, but every time they meditated together, she just used the time to daydream about various things she wanted to have, such as a new bicycle and a waffle maker and a Japanese katana sword. She did not know what kind of life she could even have outside of Black Wing. In fact, she rather suspected that the Universe would find ways to throw her into bloodbaths of her own causation even if she moved to New Zealand and lived in a tiny cottage among the sheep. But who said she couldn’t have bicycle rides and waffle breakfasts in between sessions of slicing people with a katana?

“Alright,” Corey proclaimed. “Now, let’s see what the cards have to say.”

She shuffled the deck skillfully until five cards fell out of it one by one and landed on her lap. She picked them up with care and laid them face up on the bench in front of her, examining the selection with a thoughtfully look on her face.

“Queen of swords!” Bart exclaimed cheerfully, pointing at the card.

It depicted Bart herself, sitting in a spinny chair and wielding a katana.

“The cards are telling us to exercise caution and precise decision making,” Corey said, looking deeply into the image. “It may be a time to act soon,” she added, pointing at the chariot, “but not foolishly either,” she added, pointing at the reversed ace of swords.

“The cards agree with them then.” Bart grinned.

“We are protected in our journey,” Corey replied in a serene, melodic voice. “The moon hides our intent. And the high priestess is our divine guidance. I also see flames… and I see an older woman showing us the way.”

“Be careful who you call old.”

Both Bart and Corey flinched in surprise, forced to look away from the cards. In front of them stood Charlotte - a short, plump woman with a head full of bright gray hair.

  
Charlotte had, perhaps, the most peculiar holistic ability of all the currently detained subjects, and it resided in her dreams. Every day she led a pleasant, boring life of a primary school teacher and a mum to five cats. But every night, she became someone else. Her dreams took her around the world and presented her a slice of life of various random people, a new person each time. These slices ranged from lives of simple people like her, teachers and doctors and cleaners, to remarkable persons of incredibly high social standing like presidents and CEOs. And for small chunks of six to eight hours, she got to be them in precise detail.

She remembered those precise details upon waking up as well. From the time she was in middle school and for the next fifty three years of her life she also kept records of those dreams, in neat handwriting, in stacks upon stacks of notebooks that she kept in boxes in her attic. Black Wing confiscated all these boxes of notebooks when she was taken; they were studied carefully by technicians and specialists. Charlotte herself was now designated Project Norn. Her friends were not notified and her class at school was given to another teacher. She was, however, allowed to keep in her Black Wing cell all five of her beloved cats.

  
“May I sit down?” Charlotte asked, and Corey moved on the seat, letting her join. “Right. So I hear you were asking around about project Prometheus.”

“Maybe I was,” Bart confirmed. “Do you know anything?”

“I know you should drop the snooping,” Charlotte responded. “Your plan is already complicated enough, and God knows if I am to stand on your side in that madness, you should at least keep your mouth shut and not attract attention to your already loud person.”

“I was just asking.” Bart frowned.

Charlotte was a rare kind of woman with enough intangible authority and silent power that made even Bart feel like a seven year old student in a classroom.

“Well,” Charlotte continued, “you should have went straight to me. I was him,” she explained. “One night, many years ago.”

“And?”

“And,” Charlotte lowered her voice, “forget about it. It isn’t relevant. What is relevant is that supervisor Adams will get swept up enough in this to leave. It’s big enough. To him at least. And by the time he will find out that Prometheus is not at all who he thinks he is, well… here, it will be too late,” she assured them. “Because he won’t have anything to come back to in here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a (very inexperienced/beginner) tarot reader i sure hope i got a good description of that spread... also if someone were to make a DGHDA tarot deck i would probably die of excitement on the spot!
> 
> (feel kinda bleh about this chapter but hey, next one will be fun i think)


	18. Chapter 18

“Wednesdays,” Dirk thought as he dunked a whole churro into a tall transparent glass of tea, “are the most deceptive day of the week.”

Indeed, according to Dirk’s logic at least, Wednesdays never gained a bad reputation like Mondays and Fridays but were in reality the most tedious and hard to get through. This seemed tremendously unfair to Dirk, who spent a considerable amount of time pondering absurd and pointless topics such as the reputation of various week days. He thought about the fact that Saturdays were severely underrated as he bit into his tea-soaked churro. Predictably, the tea spilled over onto the office floor, the office desk, and Dirk’s best office shirt and tie.

He wrinkled his nose, plopping the soggy remnants of the churro on the side of the desk, and reached under it to grab a handful of paper tissues. The floor and the desk were easy enough to clean off, but the tie was deemed beyond help and was promptly discarded and put into one of the desk drawers. It joined an array of various objects, such as rubber ties, unwrapped candies, broken pencils and foreign coins. 

Dirk undid the top button of his shirt and loosened the collar before delegating the rest of the churro into his mouth. Outside his window, the crows were aggregating already, and the sun shone merrily into the room. This was a typical start of a typical day at the agency - but it would not have a very typical end.

  
After spending the night at Dirk’s apartment, professor Daly followed him to his place of professional occupation. He enjoyed a short but intense tour and now resided in the waiting room, working on a rough draft of a scientific paper. All in all, he found his predicament fairly satisfactory. The detective agency offered unlimited hot drinks, high speed wi-fi, and a popcorn machine that, sadly, they couldn’t enjoy, since Dirk was banned from using it. Combined with the peace and quiet of an empty room, professor decided that this was almost a better place to draft than his very own office.

Meanwhile, Dirk was engaged in his usual detective activity. He started out the work day by attempting to clean up the place a little bit, but got distracted by his cork board. It was a massive, three meters by two meters Goliath that hanged on the wall opposite his desk and was meant as a place to plot out his cases and sort his hunches and guesses. Instead it was a depository of all things Dirk found on the Internet, which he printed out and cut out with scissors and pinned to the cork board in no particular pattern. 

Seeing one penguin meme prompted Dirk to search “penguins” on youtube, after which he spent an hour watching a documentary about a gay penguin couple raising a chick together at the New York Zoo. Once finished, still some tears in his eyes, Dirk decided that it was time for brunch. He carefully considered his nutritional needs and came to the conclusion that an omelet with some toast and vegetables on the side would do quite nicely. He returned to the office half an hour later with a whole box of churros in his hands.

After the brunch, he decided to move on to some productive tasks. He cleared out spam from his email, ticked off as read a bunch of notifications which were probably somewhat important but required more executive functioning than he was in possession of at the moment, and prolonged some subscriptions he didn’t even recognize, just in case. After those intense eleven minutes of work, he deserved a break. During that break, he accidentally almost solved an ancient Chinese puzzle in a subreddit and joined the Patreon of an Australian traveling circus. 

He was about to begin another productive session of tasks when he heard professor Daly yelping in surprise and terror. Immediately Dirk rushed to the waiting room, where he discovered the professor standing on the sofa and defending himself with a chair. The person he was defending himself against was Mona.

“Dirk!” Roger exclaimed, his jaw once again relaxed but breathing heavily still. “I was just working on my paper and then the lamp turned into, well,” he gesticulated with the chair, “this very same young lady!”

“Oh don’t worry professor,” Dirk assured him, extracting the chair from his grasp and helping him down to the floor. “That’s my secretary.”

“Your secretary is a… lamp.” Professor Daly discovered in that moment that he had lost his ability to be surprised.

“Professor Daly, this is Mona Wilder. Mona, this is Roger,” Dirk introduced.

“Very pleased to meet you,” Mona grinned, extending her hand for a handshake. “I am so sorry I startled you. I only wanted to say hi and it’s a bit tough to do. You know. As a lamp.”

Professor took her hand cautiously, as if scared she was about to turn him into a lamp.

“Quite extraordinary,” he mumbled once he realized she was indeed a real tangible person. “Quite.”

“When I said I have experience with the outlandish, the bizarre, the exceedingly rare…” Dirk mused. “I meant it.”

Professor Daly decided not to dwell on that. He accepted an offer of tea and churros, after which he returned to the work, while Dirk returned to browsing random patreon accounts, and Mona returned to happily being a lamp.

Everything was alright for precisely seventy four minutes.

*

The very much not alright part began with a thunderstorm that swept Seattle quite literally out of the blue. One second the sky was clear and bright, and the next it was intensely dark, clouds summoned in an instant like in a children’s cartoon. Most city dwellers did not react to this, safe in sound in their homes, schools, shops and offices. Many noticed already familiar electricity spikes and cutoffs, and most figured it had something to do with the storm. It indeed had something to do with the storm, but not in the way they expected.

The next very much not alright part arrived with a thud. It was a broad, generalized thud that reverberated through the entire building and every room in the detective agency office. 

Whack. Dirk jumped out of his chair and span on the spot, looking in every direction. Whack! The source simply could not be identified; it was coming from the walls, the floor and the ceiling at once. Whack! Dirk rushed into the waiting room for the second time that day and found professor Daly clutching his laptop to his chest, tense, eyes wide with terror. Whack! The tiny clock panel on the office microwave went out, and so did the electricity in the entire building. Whack!

“We have to go, professor,” Dirk whispered loudly.

“Where?!” Roger whispered back.

Not even thinking of thinking, Dirk launched towards the window and looked out. The ground beneath it was clear, nothing but the crows talking nervously among themselves, and the car was close in sight. If they could just move safely three stories down…

“Mona!” Dirk gestured vaguely at the lamp. “We need a…. Rope. No, a ladder! No, that’s too much, we need, we need…”

In a blur of transformations, the lamp became a person, then a large umbrella, then a miniature air balloon, then settled on simply being a case of stairs leading to the ground.

“Let’s go,” Dirk urged, climbing out of the window already as the thumping grew in volume and menacing power. “Please, professor.”

After a minute of paralysis, Roger left all his possessions where they were, and accepted Dirk’s hand. Together they ran down the steps and jumped into Farah’s car.

“Keep watch!” Dirk instructed at Mona, who turned into a crow and flew back into the office, then closed the window with a human hand and promptly turned back into a lamp.

The car was already a mile away, speeding across the streets, when the door to the office went off its hinges and crashed against the floor. A tall figure covered head to toe in black fabric walked in and regarded the room. They strolled across it casually, kicking a few pieces of furniture. Unsatisfied with the results, they took a seat at the sofa and put their feet up on the table.

“He has left,” they announced to no one in particular in a static-filled, metallic voice.

*

Trouble was brewing half way across the city at the very same moment. Carol Franklin noticed it first while she was making a fresh batch of her favorite cucumber and cress sandwiches and the toaster went pop with smoke in the middle of its toasting cycle. She tutted, opening the window, and fanned the black smoke out of the room with a towel. Today was not a good day for Mrs. Franklin. She lost on another lottery ticket, and the nice lad who visited her a few days ago (who texted her only yesterday to ask how she was doing) was now not picking up his phone. She had left him a voice message earlier that morning. It was not marked as received. 

Meanwhile, Kevin was having one of the biggest struggles of his entire life, trying to wash out a stain from the kitchen floor. He had been at battle with it since 7’o’clock and had by now assaulted it with every cleaning liquid known to man, to no avail. He was prepared to move on to illegal chemical weapons when Farah walked into the kitchen, and made his heart hurt with a sudden uptick in rhythm. Farah was standing up tall, eyebrows ever so slightly frowned, cold determination in her gaze.

“Dirk called,” she explained. “He’s on his way, on a run. And he thinks it’s bad.”

Kevin understood exactly what Farah meant by “bad” when a car arrived, almost crushing into the building, just out of sight from the kitchen window. He watched Farah fish a gun from beneath the sofa cushions and swallowed, deciding that it was not the right moment to ask whether he had been resting on a loaded gun for the last few days.

“Keep watching everything,” Farah instructed Todd from the threshold, “and I mean, everything, including Kevin. Especially Kevin.”

“I don’t need being looked after!” Kevin shouted.

“I don’t have fifty eyes to watch him,” Todd shouted as well.

None of that was heard by Farah, who was already half-way there to the stairs, ready to walk Dirk and professor Daly into the building.

“There they are,” Kevin commented, observing the scene from the opened window. “Seems like no one is following them. Hm.”

“Hm?” Todd repeated. “What is hm?”

“The air,” Kevin shrugged. “Tastes a bit off. Like after a thunderstorm. Or before?”

Todd was about to say something, but wasn’t quick enough. Instead of his remark came another thunderous whack.

“Holy shit,” Todd muttered. “I felt that in my bones.”

“Yes, me too,” Kevin mumbled, already hyperventilating.

He felt a strong urge to latch on to Farah, but since Farah wasn’t there, he had to settle for clutching a sofa cushion.

“They’re coming for me too,” he said, visibly shriveling up. “I am done. I’m done.”

“Hey, dude,” Todd attempted to reassure him. “This might just be a very intense and sudden thunderstorm, right?”

Then, three things happened: 

First, there was another terrifying whack. Second, the lights went out, popping the bulbs and making the electric stove go mad for a few seconds. Third, into the apartment rushed Dirk, Farah, and professor Daly, all gasping for breath, especially the professor.

“This was useless,” Dirk announced, slamming the door shut behind him. “They’ve just followed us right back to this place!”

“Well at least we’re all together,” Farah pointed out.

“So what?!” Dirk laughed nervously. “You’re brilliant, Farah, but you’re not good enough to single-handedly protect four people from, excuse me professor, from fuck knows what!”

“Hey.” Todd pouted. “I can help too! Good morning by the way.”

“Bad time for pleasantries,” Dirk hissed. “Sorry. Sorry!” he quickly added. “I thought I’d be accustomed to stress this far into my career but apparently I am not.”

“Listen,” Farah interfered, “we have to decide what we are going to do. We’re either staying put and trying to defend ourselves here, or running away, preferably to a place where we can defend ourselves better. So?” No response, other than a whack. “Hello!”

“We can go to my house,” Kevin said unexpectedly. “It has a basement with a single entrance. It should be the easiest to protect. Oh god, I feel like I’m having a heart attack,” he mumbled, clutching his chest.

The whacking raged on in the background, seemingly with added strength.

“Right! Fine,” Dirk said. “Wait. Why are you all looking at me?” In very quick succession, he first frowned, then opened his mouth in shock, then closed it again, blinked in silence for a few milliseconds, then frowned once more. “Are you expecting me to make a decision?!”

“Whatever.” Farah sighed. “We’re going to Kevin’s house. Right. Here’s what we’re doing. Ugh!” She made the motion to massage her temples, then remembered she was still holding a gun and changed her mind. “Me and Kevin are going first to distract them. The… thing, whatever it is, wants you,” she pointed at Roger, who nodded frantically, “so we’ll be safer. Then once you can tell that the path is clear, you,” she pointed at Dirk and Todd, “take the professor and get him to the car. Kevin’s car, not mine. And start driving around the neighborhood or something. Find us, basically. We’ll be on the run. We’re good?”

None of them were good, including Farah, but this had to suffice.

“Right,” she said, grabbing Kevin by the arm. “Ready or not… we’re going.”

*

The runaway was an utter blur for all parties involved. One moment, Farah was running, Kevin holding on to her elbow for dear life. The next she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks; a tall figure glowing bright was blocking away, reaching towards them and, just for a split second, Farah could almost distinguish a human face beneath the glow.

Then she fired her gun. 

She did not think after that; instead, she concentrated all her willpower and strength on getting Kevin out and finding a hideout far away from the building. There she sat, breathing heavily, hoping that she had not left Dirk and Todd in mortal danger.

Luckily for Dirk and Todd, all they encountered was confusion and occasional thumping. Todd saw from the corner of his eyes two figures somewhere under the stairs, one holding the other, talking to each other in what sounded like TV static. They escaped the building three seconds later. Escaped, ran towards the car, and wheeled away at mind boggling speeds. They didn’t quite remember how Farah and Kevin ended up in the car, or how they made it to Kevin’s house.

Upon arriving there, all five rushed into the basement and closed it shut.

And there they sat - confused, exhausted, shaking… watching the beautiful blue water in the underground water pool shimmer under the faint LED lights like the smooth surface of a great majestic lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've decided to go back to posting once a week, on Saturdays. i'm actually ahead on drafting, but editing is the hard part for me and the twice a week schedule was stressing me out too much. so for November, i'll be posting once a week, and then in December i will probably post way more right until the novel is done. thank you for understanding <3


	19. Chapter 19

Four hours passed before Farah even suggested that it might already be okay to leave. Four hours were wasted sitting around the swimming pool - silent, tense, and listening for the tiniest hints of a wall whack or crackling electricity. Alas, no whacks or cracks of any sort came, which was the very thing driving most of them stir crazy as opposed to any immediate danger. The slow boil of expected mayhem mixed in equal proportions with a lot of awkward attempts to start a conversation and just a hint of existential dread. To Farah in particular, it felt a lot like Thanksgiving dinner with family.

Indeed, what motivated her in the end to leave the wretched basement wasn’t so much a sense of safety or courage as an intense desire to just not be waiting anymore. If the monster was on the other end, she would rather face it than spend another minute huddled together in the dark. And Farah made that step, and was the one to discover a total absence of any monsters on the other end of the door.

They all thought it would make them feel better.

It did not.

Now in late afternoon, the house was deceptively tranquil and tangibly empty, far too big even for a decent company of people. It was hard to believe something so strange could happen in a place so painfully normal. They wanted to talk to each other about it, address the discrepancy and figure out which parts of their memories matched up, but couldn’t quite force themselves. They had, after all, managed to not bring it up for this long. So why even bother?

It wasn’t all gloom and dread anyway. Currently, Dirk Gently was actually quite bored. His meandering exploration of the house had so far took him to a plethora of tremendously uninteresting rooms and he was losing hope of ever finding anything to pique his curiosity. Another turn lead him into an enormous art gallery, and he inspected a few of the paintings with limited attention. 

Dirk had never been a big fan of fine arts on account of having bizarre tastes that he couldn’t even articulate properly. For example, the one painting he really quite enjoyed in the gallery turned out in fact to be a children’s drawing that had been covered up by wallpaper and later uncovered. It depicted a family of rainbow coloured octopuses, some of which were wearing hats. “Kevin, age 7,” it proclaimed on the bottom. Dirk took a picture of it on his phone and moved on.

Next, the house tour brought Dirk to three different bathrooms, a room with a pool table, and a mini-bakery inside of the enormous kitchen. The bakery is where he realized that he hadn’t eaten anything since morning, so by the time he had found the tiny office, he had one apple stuffed into the pocket of his jacket and was biting into another. 

The tiny office in question resided at the end of a particularly twisty corridor, hidden away from sight deep into the mansion. It gave the impression of a room that was used rarely if ever, but visited often, as it was almost artificially clean but bore no signs of active habitation or use. It contained a single desk with a luxurious chair, two small cabinets filled with books, and a dead fireplace. 

On the desk were displayed a variety of photographs, mostly of a man always wearing the same smart suit, expressing deep contempt for the person taking the photograph for having the nerve to distract him from incredibly urgent business. On earlier photographs, the man was seen next to a plump, rosy-cheeked woman, and a young boy with scraped knees and a bright smile. 

Then, gradually, the man on the photos grew older and even sterner in his expression, while the boy grew up, and the woman disappeared entirely. The photograph in the center was the only one where the entire family looked happy, enjoying a summer evening outside. On it, a boy’s hand drew an octopus in a cowboy hat. Dirk looked at it for longer then the others, smiling; then snapped a picture of it on his phone and moved on.

Eventually, through Brownian motion of molecules in his legs, Dirk ended up in a vast living room that resembled a cathedral more than it did a place for watching TV and displaying the decorations deemed not special enough for the dining room. Indeed, this one consisted mostly of empty space, with an enormous sofa facing the TV on the wall. The TV was on; the sofa occupied. Dirk walked slowly across the polished floor and, without saying a word, took a seat half a meter away from Todd.

“I think his cable has every single channel on Earth,” Todd commented, his finger automatically switching channels on the remote. “Cause I’ve started switching half an hour ago and it just keeps going.”

“They might be looping,” Dirk suggested.

“I think,” Todd continued, ignoring the interruption, “that he’s getting channels from every country. Or at least from every country that has TV channels. And maybe from some that don’t. Like, look at this.” He stopped at a random channel and left it on for a minute. On the screen, two women sat opposite each other in a studio, discussing something in warm, friendly tones. “What language is this even?” Todd asked. “Ukrainian?”

“Serbian, actually” Dirk replied without turning his head, all intonation gone from his voice.

“What are you, an expert on Slavic languages?” Todd smirked, then, glancing sideways, realized that Dirk was staring unblinking at the screen, his face motionless and stern.

“I know cause that’s my native language,” Dirk explained in the same monotonous voice. “They’re discussing a book. I think that woman wrote it.”

“Serbian?” Todd repeated, frowning. “But you’re…”

“I grew up in Britain,” he replied ahead of the question, “I was too young to properly remember Serbia. But my parents are from there. Were,” he corrected himself. “And it’s fine, Todd. You look like you’ve seen a ghost and I’m the only one allowed to look like that in this current interaction we’re having.” With that, he took the remote from Todd’s hand and muted the sound.

“You never talk about… anything, to be honest,” Todd mused out loud. “I mean, you’re constantly talking about everything, but not about yourself, or what happened to you before we met. Is that because it’s difficult for you?”

“It’s because none of you ever ask, really,” Dirk shrugged. “Not that I have any complaints to file about that.”

“But I talk to you non-stop about college and Amanda and my high school friends and…” Todd paused. “Damn, sorry, Dirk, I never thought about it like this, that you…”

“I’m fine,” Dirk said with the tone and expression far too intense to convince anyone of the veracity of his words. “All that stuff was ages ago! I don’t need it, I have you and Farah and the agency and plenty of new cases to think about. You know, I think you were spot on about Kevin being connected.”

“You’re changing the topic.”

“No, Todd, I have already changed the topic. Perfect tense. The action is complete. Now either stay with this already firmly established topic or suggest one of your own.”

“Hey,” Todd interrupted, turning towards him and, completely on autopilot, on pure instinct, placing his hand next to Dirk’s. “You can talk about your childhood, if you want. We’re stuck here anyway and there’s no one here. Might as well. You don’t have to though,” he added quickly, “if it’s too painful.”

“It’s not painful,” Dirk replied. “That’s the issue. It’s not, well, anything, as you’ve said. My memory’s strange. I have these,” he gesticulated, searching for a word, “bits and pieces, just shreds of memories, but they’re all very vague. I know all the facts. Moved to UK when I was four, grew up in Yorkshire, went to school in Leads… I remember the names, the addresses, the phone numbers… but not the childhood.” He paused and licked his lips, Todd’s eyes fixed on him. “Now mind you, Black Wing, that I remember very well and have no desire to discuss, but that wasn’t childhood, that was after.”

“How old were you?” Todd asked. “When they took you?”

“Nine.”

“Really?”

“I wasn’t the youngest there, but they didn’t let me see them much.”

“And after Black Wing?”

“Went back to England,” Dirk said. “Studied in Cambridge. Almost graduated, but there were, well, let’s call them complications I was mildly responsible for. Tried to be a private detective there, with intermittent success. Then got contacted by the CIA again, but that time on my own terms. Went to the US again. Worked some cases for them. Climbed into your window. And you were mostly around for the rest of it.”

“I keep forgetting,” Todd smiled, “that you were already insane before me…”

“Very rude!” Dirk laughed.

“No, seriously,” Todd laughed back, “my life was very boring before I met you. Stressful, hectic, but normal. And yours really wasn’t.”

“Not since I was a tiny baby.” Dirk nodded. “My mother called me a weirdness magnet. I used to get in trouble every week at school because every incident and rumor could be traced back to me.” He paused, expression somewhat grimmer again. “My mum, she… I think she was a bit afraid of me.”

“I wouldn’t have made it alive to adulthood with that power.” Todd chuckled, ignoring the last comment - for Dirk’s and his own sake.

“I almost didn’t actually,” Dirk replied, “on several occasions. But, um, right.” His hand moved, unthinking, almost subconsciously, towards Todd’s. “I can tell you, maybe, at some point. If you want.”

Dirk’s hand was now a few atomic lengths away from Todd’s and there was nothing Todd wanted more than to reach out and take it at last - and yet some sort of mystical power stopped him at the last moment.

“Let’s see what else is on that TV,” Todd suggested, as his hand changed places and rested on the remote. “Maybe there are some nice music channels.”

*

On the other side of the mansion, Farah dropped heavily into an armchair, feeling like she had been awake for twenty seven consecutive days and had taken an exam, moved apartments and worked a full shift at a restaurant on every single one of those days. Her current mode of life was a perpetual cycle of alert and resolution. Every ten minutes on the dot, Kevin would call for her, panicking, and every ten minutes she would either rush for his rescue, or check the windows with a gun in her hands, or patrol the corridors on account of suspicious activity. 

This lifestyle was not sustainable, Farah quickly realized. And thinking about the fact that this would likely to go on for an indefinite amount of time made her long for a nice relaxing holiday mining for coal in Wales, far away from the god forsaken mansion. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then…

“This all might be awfully hard to handle all on your own.”

Farah barley had the strength to look up. When she did, she discovered professor Daly, who had entered the room and taken a seat near her, in a similarly puffy and luxurious armchair.

“Mint?” he suggested. She took one and thanked him.

“I’m not all on my own,” Farah said, “it’s just that no one else can do specifically this job. Dirk is great at accidentally navigating out of a maze or finding clues he did not know were clues or actually solving the case. And Todd is great in a real crisis, you know, dealing with real problems and fighting actual enemies. Not so good at, I don’t know. Guarding.”

“Mr Gently was indeed guarding me,” professor Daly chuckled, “but I believe it was an honorary position more than anything. Your client is a different story.”

“My, khm, client,” Farah responded, lips stiff, “is incapable of telling apart a falling spec of dust from an armed robber. And I am this close to shooting at dust to get him to shut up.”

“But these are extraordinary events,” Roger interrupted. “I am a skeptic myself but being a skeptic does not mean denying the obvious when it is staring you in the face. We are dealing with either extremely advanced technology or some such, or a case of elaborate setup and manipulation. Both me and that Kevin of yours.”

Farah sighed, considering whether to speak up.

“When we were running away,” she said, bouncing her leg nervously, “and that… thing, reached for us… I think it was specifically reaching for Kevin. Like, they were on their way to you, they wanted you - but they also wanted Kevin.”

“Quite bizarre.” Professor nodded. “It’s like us both were swept up in the same storm.”

“I should have asked Kevin a lot of things, and a long time ago,” Farah said. “Actually, I should just do it now. It’s been…” she glanced at her watch, expecting ten minutes exactly to have passed. “God, it’s been almost an hour!” she exclaimed. “Did I fall asleep sitting?!”

“You were napping.” Roger shrugged. “I did not want to disturb you.”

“Oh shit!” Farah cursed, jumping out of the arm chair at once. “I have to find him!”

  
And she did find him eventually, after several horrible, horrible hours spent frantically searching the entire mansion and its premises. 

Farah found Kevin outside, a few houses away, lying face down in the grass next to the road. He had no signs of damage, was barely breathing, and completely unresponsive.

*

Friedkin did not plan to spend that day in front of his universe TV. In fact, that day had been set aside for a major cleanup of his bookshelves since three imaginary weeks ago, but alas, one of the Friedkin’s got sucked into a brother Strugatski novel, and the whole task had been abandoned forty minutes after it started. A great variety - stacks upon stacks - of books of all shapes and sizes now rested on the floor all around the floor-less, roofless, wall-less room. And Friedkins sat on their respective chairs, eating imaginary but nevertheless delicious fresh strawberries; and watched the TV.

“You’ve been switching channels for ages,” one of the Friedkins complained to the remote-wielder. “Like, settle on one already!”

“I’m searching the thing,” Friedkin replied.

“Which thing?”

“Ugh, you know… the thing!”

Luckily this was exactly the moment Friedkin finally clicked on the thing, or he would have to go through the torturous exercise of trying to remember a word that is dancing just on the tip of your tongue - and five times over, since that is how many Friedkins were currently present in the room.

“Ah, that thing!” Friedkin beamed.

On the screen, two figures dressed in gleaming black sat opposite each other in a profoundly white room. One was helping the other carefully remove parts of their suit, including a section that was smoking, torn apart by something.

“And you were saying the costumes are overkill,” the one helping said, extracting something from the thick fabric and dropping it on the floor. It made a loud metallic sound, like a coin hitting the ground.

“I said the costumes were overkill for the electric shells,” the other replied, removing their helmet. “They are still pretty good against bullets.”

“We’ve lost them. Both.”

“We’ll find them both.”

“Time’s running out.”

“Yes, well. I work great under pressure.” They paused, and Friedkin felt like they stared exactly into his soul through the screen of the universe TV. “Get us new costumes. We’re going back for him. Immediately.”

  
“They really mean business,” Friedkin nodded thoughtfully at the screen. “I hate this,” he confessed to other Friedkins. “It’s, like, it’s really giving me anxiety. Cause if it worked on that rich dude…” he frowned. “What’s gonna happen to Dirk?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kinda hated this one again but hey, things don't have to be perfect, the world is on fire and i just wanna vibe with this story and move along right to the next chapter y'know? hope you enjoyed it anyway and also i really like the one that is coming next
> 
> thank you all for continued support even when i don't reply to comments, you're amazing and i very much appreciate it <3


	20. Chapter 20

Dirk Gently had always known that he did not pay attention to things the same way that most people did.

He discovered this for the first time at the age of five, when he focused so intensely on a window crack, he somehow missed the moment both his parents (as well as all the other passengers, one by one) had left, leaving him and the driver the only people inside. He continued to be reminded of it again and again in the subsequent years. 

At eight, he was successfully missing every single fact listed in every single one of his English history classes, yet memorizing by heart every song that played on the radio. At fourteen, Riggins would drive him insane with idiotic tasks he could not even properly understand, but could hear and distinguish the voices of other children, in other rooms, sobbing ever so quietly and asking for their mothers.

It was happening now as well. The hospital around was him chuck full of noise and people and details, all competing for his attention, yet that didn’t prevent Dirk from spending approximately eight minutes watching a can of coca-cola stuck inside of a vending machine do precisely nothing.

“It’s really very sad,” thought Dirk, examining the can from every side. Judging by the label, it had been stuck in the vending machine since 1995, and no one cared enough about it to reach into the twisted coil and get the can out. “All these years,” Dirk mused in his head, “and it stayed there, alone, watching all the other cans get picked one by one. Every other can, but not this one.”

He drove himself to quite deep levels of sadness through an extraordinary feat of imagination, attributing all kinds of feelings and experiences to the poor lonely and very expired can of soda. He would have never remembered that he came here to get a drink if it wasn’t for professor Daly.

“You alright there, son?” professor asked, and it took Dirk a few seconds to register the words, decipher them, and react to them.

“Hm?” was the reaction, accompanied by a slow turn of Dirk’s head. “Oh. Professor.”

“You’re not a fan of hospitals either then,” Roger smiled warmly, and Dirk gave him a single nod, deciding that it was an easier reason than a sudden bout of deep empathy for an inanimate object. “Me too. This one in particular. Yes. Quite.” He paused, and rubbed his wrinkled forehead. “Both of my parents died here,” he explained, “but that was long ago. More then twenty years. Almost thirty.”

“I’m sorry,” Dirk muttered.

“’S alright,” Roger assured him. “Oh, right, I was supposed to say that the doctor finally showed up. She’s talking to Todd and Farah now.”

“I should listen to that. Probably,” Dirk said, and followed Roger back to the ICU.

  
In the room where Kevin stayed, motionless and stiff, various tubes coming in and out of his body, the curtains were drawn and the floors smelled of flowers and strong alcohol, like a fanciful party cocktail. Farah and Todd stood by Kevin’s bed, and opposite them stood a young woman with an iPad in her hands. Dirk sneaked into the room almost on tiptoes and joined Todd and Farah, while Roger took a seat near the window to the side, not particularly invested in whatever was going on here.

“Like I was saying,” the woman continued after the interruption, “his condition is severe but stable. I’ve discussed his EEG results with Dr. Sierra, the neurologist, and he thinks this level of brain activity leaves at least some chance of partial or, potentially, even full regaining of consciousness.”

“But why…” Todd frowned, waving a hand above Kevin as if he was a hideously decorated cake at a baking competition, “why is he like this? I mean, ‘he’s in a coma’ is a consequence, not a cause, right?”

The doctor frowned right back at him, tapping the iPad screen nervously. “We aren’t completely sure,” she elaborated. “We have detected a fault in his pacemaker, so our best guess is that a mechanical fault occurred, and caused temporary heart failure, which cut out oxygen to his brain.”

“And you can recover from that?” Dirk asked incredulously. 

“That rather depends on how prolonged was the oxygen deprivation,” the woman replied. “Without knowing how much time passed between the heart failure and you finding him, it’s…”

“Oh god,” Farah mumbled, then, quite suddenly for both herself and everyone else, covered half her face with her hand and rushed out of the room.

“I better go check up on her,” Todd muttered, running after Farah.

“Yes. Right.” The doctor shook her head, an expression of sympathy on her face. “What I’m saying is, it’s impossible to say right now. Whether he will wake up or not. I’m sorry,” she added. 

“Sorry?” Dirk repeated.

“You all look like you were quite close, and…”

“Oh, pff, no,” Dirk dismissed, “I’ve only met this bloke like yesterday! I was just thinking, “ he carried on, “a fault in his pacemaker… how does? No, wait, never mind. You have better things to do while my brain is configuring. Lives to save and so forth. Please go be awesome and I’ll get back to you.” Dirk beamed.

And taking the opportunity, the woman walked out of the room at once, feeling like she was unexpectedly forced into an advanced version of a “talking to family members” exam, which she failed.

*

Farah stood outside the hospital, somewhere among the cars on a half-empty parking lot, clutching a road sign and breathing at rates she didn’t know human lungs were capable of. She didn’t hear Todd approach, but she still knew he was approaching. When he stopped behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, she turned around and pulled him into a hug.

“I am so damn stupid,” she mumbled into his shoulder, still feeling like her lungs were filling up with liquid fire. “All day he was panicking, all day, and I thought he was annoying and paranoid and specifically trying to make me mad and now I feel like I’m about to have heart failure too…”

“Hey,” Todd said, “it’s fine, it’s an anxiety attack. You’ll be fine. Do this, okay, take a deep breath, then hold it for four seconds.” She did. “Now breathe out, but slowly, on count of five. Yes. Right, and do that again, a few times over. Always helps me after an attack.”

Farah had a lot of questions to her own nervous system, particularly about reasons and timing, but decided to shelf them for a bit and focus on her breathing. They stood together for a while until she could breathe normally and speak normally again, after which she let go of her dead strong grip on Todd’s shoulder, to the relief of that definitely bruised shoulder.

“It’s all my fault,” Farah continued, a bit calmer but still high on emotion, “I am stupid! I am so stupid and useless and I let people down. Always! Always, Todd,” she couldn’t even look at him, “I did this with Patric and with Lydia and so many of the people on our cases. I can’t protect anyone. What’s the point of me even?!” She produced a single forced laugh and shook her head. “I’m not a person, I’m not a professional, I’m just some thing, some thing without any decent skills who can’t get anything right. No wonder no one wants me!”

“Farah, listen,” Todd interrupted, “you’re being way, way too hard on yourself. You didn’t fail cause he wasn’t killed. He’s not dead, remember? He just had a heart attack, which, come on, he had a heart condition already! He panicked himself half to death.”

“Oh really,” Farah scoffed, “you really think something as normal as a heart attack is going to happen in a case. And this is a case, and Dirk is feeling it, I’ve seen it on him. I always know. He can tell when it is a case and I can tell when he knows. And anyway,” she dismissed her own logic, “even if it was a normal heart attack, I still let him down. Cause I should have realized goddamn it!” She laughed nervously again. “He’s been so anxious and he actually said he felt like he was having a heart attack at some point and I dismissed it! I thought that he was exaggerating and…”

“Wait,” Todd said, feeling a thought creep up on him and attack him out of the dark like a carnivorous hamster. “I remember when he said that. He said that when this guy… oh fuck!” Todd exclaimed, suddenly rotating two times on the spot. “That’s the… oh shit!”

“What?” Farah’s eyes were wide, trying hard to understand what the hell was going on in Todd’s head.

“The other guy in the ICU!” Todd yelled. “When they just let us in to see Kevin, I saw that other guy and I told you, I told you he looked familiar and oh this is definitely a case!”

And he ran back towards the hospital before Farah could ask any further questions.

*

While all of this was happening, Dirk sat by Kevin’s bed, looking thoughtfully through the words printed in his chart and trying to pretend like he understood highly specific medical terms such as “EEG waveform amplitude” and “platelet aggregation activity”. Roger respected his thought process, quietly going through the crossword in today’s paper, and the other patients in the room did not add anything to the discussion either, mostly due to being in a coma. Then the ICU sliding door opened and yet another person came in.

It wasn’t Todd, or Farah, or one of the physicians. It was a thirty-something woman, wearing a long white dress and with hair so long it almost reached her waist. And upon entering, she went right for Kevin’s bed.

“Hello,” Dirk greeted, quickly putting the chart back in its place.

“Oh, uhm, hi,” the woman said, not even looking at Dirk. “Damn you, Kev…” she mumbled, grabbing a chair that Dirk occupied just a few seconds ago and taking a seat near the bed. “The hell happened…”

“He’s in a coma,” Dirk explained. “They aren’t giving much more details. I’ve been trying to deduce some but I’m afraid I’m not ready to share that information just yet - with myself or anyone else.”

“Uhm,” the woman replied. 

“And you are?”

“Alexandra. Alexandra Martinez,” she introduced. “I, well… I’m his ex-girlfriend.”

“Huh,” Dirk said, frowning slightly. “A bit unusual then.”

“Oh it’s not like that,” she explained quickly. 

“You were planning on getting together again?”

“Well, no, not really, I mean, I was the one who broke up with him, but…” she paused, taking Kevin’s hand and brushing her fingers over it tenderly, “that doesn’t mean I don’t care about him?”

“Perfectly reasonable, dear,” Roger assured her.

She didn’t know who he was, but thanked him silently with a nod.

“Kev’s a complicated man,” she smiled, almost through tears. “A bit pig-headed. Can be quite annoying sometimes. His opinions… I mean, his thoughts on medieval realism are just,” she chuckled for a moment, “…yeah. As a boyfriend, we just, it just didn’t work like that. But he was my best friend and I thought, if I let myself be angry for all the stupid bullshit he has done, he’ll understand what I’m mad about, and learn from his mistakes, finally, and then we can be best friends again, but, oh god, if the last things I told him…” and she stopped again, about to break into a sob.

Dirk wanted to comfort her, and a thousand possible versions of how that could have been achieved were flashing through his mind at the same time. He was about to attempt a gentle pat on the back when through the ICU doors rushed in Todd - eyes wide, hair tousled - and lurched for the other bed, not even noticing Alexandra.

“Hell yeah it’s him!” Todd yelled with an almost maniacal expression of his face. “Dirk!” he exclaimed, pointing at the man in the bed, excited like a labrador retriever who was sent after a duck and returned with a whole deer. “It’s him!”

“Whom?” Dirk, who was about as puzzled as everyone else in the room, got up and approached Todd cautiously, as if afraid that Todd was about to bite him in his excitement.

“The guy!” Todd beamed. “This,” he glanced at the chart hanging off the bed, “Orson Delaware, whatever. When we came in I looked at this guy and thought hey, he looks familiar, where have I seen him, and I did! He came to our apartment like two days ago. I made him tea!”

“That’s… fascinating, Todd,” Dirk said, “but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”

“Don’t you see?” for Todd, this was painfully obvious, so he couldn’t even grasp how it wasn’t obvious to Dirk. “This guy came to the apartment two days before and he’s been in a coma here since then. And now Kevin is in a coma too. In the same ICU! He must have, I don’t know,” he mumbled, “ he must have infected him with coma!”

“Who the hell are you two?” Alexandra demanded, and for the first time Todd realized there was another person in the room.

“We shall discuss this outside,” Dirk smiled politely, dragging Todd out by the sleeve. “I have another issue. Like a toothpick in my brain.”

“That sounds serious,” Todd nodded.

“The pacemaker,” Dirk explained. “The doctor said they think it malfunctioned, but this guy’s a billionaire. As stupid as it is, shouldn’t he have the best of the best? The kind of pacemakers that never fail?”

“Do you think,” Todd continued in a conspiratorial voice, “that the other coma guy put like, a curse, on Kevin’s pacemaker?”

“And then it backfired on him,” Dirk picked up, “and he, well, he… we’re both idiots.” He proclaimed. “We have to ask the doctor who’s treating him.”

Luckily for them and unluckily for the poor overworked woman, they found Kevin’s doctor in the corridor next over, trying to stuff a whole snickers bar into herself in her one five minute break since two in the afternoon.

“Hello again doctor, uh, Schlechter,” Dirk read off her badge, “could I just bother you with one teeny-tiny question?”

The woman considered for a while, then decided it was far easier and quicker to just answer, and continued to listen while still trying to swallow a whole quarter of a chocolate bar in one go.

“You said Mr. McDougall’s pacemaker developed a fault,” Dirk said, “and thing is, we’re private detectives, and Mr. McDougall is our client, so it would really rather help if you could share exactly what that fault is?”

“We have reasons to believe he could have been harmed,” Todd added.

“Share it even if it seems strange to you,” Dirk advised. “We’re quite used to that. Being private detectives and all.”

“Fine,” the woman gave up. “The pacemaker didn’t develop a fault. The battery did.”

“And is that strange?” Todd asked.

“It is,” she nodded, still chewing, “considering that we didn’t find it. The battery I mean. Every detail is quite visible on X-ray, including parts that get displaced cause that can actually happen, but that’s the thing. The pacemaker doesn’t have a battery anymore and it’s not anywhere else in his body. It’s gone.”

“Right,” Dirk said, already walking away with Todd following, “thank you doctor, that was very useful!” he yelled over his shoulder.

“What is it then?” Todd asked, excited once again. 

“Very simple,” Dirk smirked at him. “Simple, because we can immediately discard all the improbable and go straight to the impossible.”

“Meaning?”

“Unless we are willing to entertain the notion that Kevin has been walking around with a non-functional pacemaker for years,” he began as the annoying toothpick in his brain was removed at last, “and no one - not a single doctor - had noticed, we have to come to the impossible and yet the only remaining conclusion,” Dirk said, and took a pause for dramatic effect, unable to help himself, “which is that someone, quite probably the same someone who is after my very client professor Daly, someone has attacked Mr McDougall today… and stole the battery right out of his steadily beating heart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please forgive the inconsistency of a chronically unemployed gig worker ending up in the same ICU as an actual billionaire - i'm sure there is a holistic reason for this but i haven't thought of one yet lol
> 
> also i am steadily on schedule to finish this novel somewhere in early December! i would probably switch to updating more often if editing wasn't such a pain in the ass for me. thank you for all the support as usual!


	21. Chapter 21

That night, Dirk got to tick off another experience from his “things I didn’t get to do as a teenager because my childhood totally sucked” list - namely, a sleepover. And, he had to begrudgingly admit, it also totally sucked.

This sleepover severely deviated from his American movie informed expectations of pillow fights, painting nails, and talking about boys. Instead, it involved the four of them huddled in his living room, doors barricaded and curtains drawn, guarding in shifts and expecting to hear a thud in the wall or the crack in the electric sockets at any moment. The thud or the crackle never came, but the morning did. With the morning came the prescient question of what the hell they were supposed to do now, which brought them to the detective agency office for lack of better ideas. After all, it was a slightly more suitable place to stay in rather than one British man’s profoundly chaotic apartment.

And the office is where they stayed - sleep deprived, soaked in anxiety like ladyfingers in sweet espresso, and surviving on a stable supply of junk food and the aforementioned sweet espresso. Currently, they were in the process of deducing the case. What that looked like is Dirk’s giant cork board propped up against the wall in the waiting room, Dirk, Todd, and Farah arguing rather loudly with each other over various minute details, and professor Daly watching them from the couch, perplexed. 

The professor did not even try to contribute to the discussion since he was far more interested in talking to Mona. She had just assumed a human form to chat with him, and he was throwing question after question into her pure, curious mind.

“…and if I may ask such a personal question,” Roger continued, smiling awkwardly at Mona, “if you were to transform into an object that can be separated into two distinct entities, what would happen upon you changing shapes again?”

“Not sure,” she shrugged. “But we can check!”

With that, she turned into a Russian nesting doll, which the professor carefully took apart one by one and spread out across the coffee table. He then watched the dolls with such intense attention, he thought his eyes would pop out of their sockets. But alas, when Mona became her human-looking self again, all the dolls were gone at once.

“Fascinating,” professor muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Absolutely astonishing. This does very much make me think of the prospects of quantum entanglement in this case, and…”

“Quantum entanglement?” Mona repeated. “What’s that?”

“Oh my dear young lady,” Roger beamed, “if you only wish to find out, you can learn this from a tenured professor of Cooltown University.”

And that prospect appealed to Mona quite strongly, so she gave him a single enthusiastic nod.

  
Meanwhile, the discussion of deductive methods at the cork board was rapidly approaching boiling levels. The current point of contention seemed to be the degree to which Kevin’s feeling of being watched related to professor Daly’s popping light bulbs. Dirk was searching for a direct link, Farah was of the opinion that he was omitting a few (or few dozen) key steps. 

Todd stood back, unwilling to take sides, and took in a generous fraction of the cork board. He had no way of knowing just by looking at it, but in fact Todd was witnessing an accurate depiction of Dirk’s mind: vast, utterly unorganized, and filled to the brim with a wide array of mostly minor and inconsequential details that, on their own, made no sense at all, but put together almost looked like a meaningful whole. For example, a photo of a child’s drawing of octopuses… what was that for, exactly?

“What do you think?” Dirk asked him suddenly.

“About the Kevin and light bulbs connection?”

“No,” Dirk frowned, “about pizza. I’m ordering now. Have you been listening at all?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Todd muttered, and Dirk walked up to the window for a moment, leaving him and Farah alone. “This won’t make sense to us,” he told her. “This literally, physically, cannot make sense to us. Like, holy shit, I can’t even imagine being able to process this amount of information at the same time.”

“That’s why he put everything on the board,” Farah commented.

“But that’s literally everything,” Todd continued, “I mean, I can look at it on the board, can see the pieces, but I can’t, you know… think about the way he does. I can’t even look at it, to be honest. It’s too much.”

Farah glanced at Todd, then at the board, then at Todd again - and nodded.

“Us talking is helping him do the thing. I think,” she said. “But yeah you’re right. We’re pretty useless.”

By now, Dirk had returned and immediately picked up where he had left, except his brain kept going while he was ordering pizza, and as a result where he had left was approximately twenty miles and fifty seven years further than Todd and Farah. When he realized that, he stopped, thought about how to recap the last three minutes of his brain’s steady churning, then stopped again.

“So does anyone know how real investigators go about solving cases?” Todd asked at no one in particular. Dirk raised a hand and opened his mouth to speak, but Todd interrupted him with “TV shows don’t count,” after which Dirk no longer had something to say.

“What about comic books?” Dirk suggested after a prolonged pause.

“I need a shot of caffeine,” Farah declared, practically stumbling out of her chair, “and by shot I mean an actual syringe full of caffeine straight into my jugular.”

“Might as well just do amphetamines,” Todd laughed.

“Great idea,” Farah said through a jaw-displacing yawn. “This isn’t working, by the way,” she said at Dirk in particular.

“I think we are having great fun!” Mona smiled.

Dirk was about to give his sophisticated essay-length opinion on the concept of fun, when the doorbell rang and caused a terrible road accident to his train of thought.

“Oh that must be the pizza I ordered!” he said, and walked confidently towards the door.

This, in turn, set off a brewing thought process in Todd’s brain, and he wrestled with it for a moment before deciding that he would rather tackle that after a hot meal. The thought did a three sixty loop around his head and rammed into his forehead again just as Dirk was unlocking the door.

“Wait!” Todd yelled, “you’ve ordered literally a minute ago, they couldn’t have…”

But it was too late. Dirk had already undone the locking mechanism. The door clicked, then opened wide and hit the wall with a loud clang. On the threshold stood…

“Lilly?!” the acrobatics in Dirk’s eyebrows were so impressive, they would have been accepted into circus school immediately upon audition.

“It is indeed me,” she declared, stumbling into the agency office. “You know, for people in your predicament, you are astonishingly relaxed about who you let into the place.”

With that remark, she turned around, locked the door, then marched confidently towards the windows and drew the blinds on every single one.

“How did you find this address?” Dirk asked.

“Pff,” she scoffed, now walking up to various walls and pressing her ear to them. “You are very easily googlable. Another major security flaw, by the way.”

“Who is this girl again?” Farah asked, standing up defiantly with her freshly brewed coffee in one hand, her other palm resting comfortably on the gun holster at her waist.

“Hi,” Lilly smiled a crooked, forced smile, “my name is Lilly and you are very screwed and will likely be dead or comatose in approximately forty eight hours.” She smiled again. “And no this is not a threat. I am not here to save you, either, I am here because,” she looked around frantically and suddenly discovered professor Daly sitting just a few meters away from her. “Oh. Hi, Roger. I, uh, I didn’t notice you here.”

“Is there anything you want to say now Lilly?” Roger asked, one eyebrow raised, the other subtly frowned.

“Yes, uhm,” she hesitated, as if unsure whether the charade was worth maintaining, “yeah well listen, Roger, you’re fucked.” Evidently, she decided it was a bit too late in the end. “And it’s partially my fault and I am sorry, I really am, cause they think you have it and you don’t and, well, it doesn’t matter who messed up cause I will fix it.” She smiled, warmly this time. “I’ll keep you safe, I promise. I have a place you can go to and lay low for a while, and this bunch is not completely useless so…”

“Hold on and roll it back a bit, young lady,” Roger said. “I think I lost you somewhere along the way.”

“Oh you really did but that’s not the point. Trust me, it would take me 20 lecture hours at least to explain this whole thing and we don’t have the time…”

“No one is going into hiding,” Farah interrupted. “We’ve tried that already. It didn’t work. And I’m not losing another person.”

“He isn’t dead,” Todd reminded, but was emphatically ignored.

“Y’all are fucking stupid,” Lilly beamed, “and you will get very hurt. If you are expecting me to get impressed by this high school geek club of yours, then forgive me for not having much confidence. I’m here to protect my friend,” she said, glancing at Roger, “and I will do what I think is best for him.”

“And have you asked me about it, perhaps?” Roger walked up to her, eyebrows frowned slightly, and took a stand a couple meters away. “Has anyone here asked what I think is best for myself?”

“Roger,” Lilly’s expression was soft, but her eyes betrayed something bigger, deeper and darker - like all-encompassing blackness behind the stars on th night sky. “Oh, I wish I could tell you.”

“This is about Arthur, isn’t it?” 

She nodded, unsure of what to say next.

“Can I just ask?” Dirk interrupted, “What was the entire plan, exactly? Get the professor to safety, and then…”

“Go and fix it.” Lilly shrugged. “I know where they’ll go next. It’s in the middle of a desert, in California. And the key’s still there as well.”

“That’s it then,” Dirk smiled, “we’re all going.”

“How in the observable universe is that the logical conclusion?” Lilly scoffed.

“Don’t expect logic from him,” Todd advised. “But he is most likely right. I know, it’s very annoying. But you get used to it.”

“I hate admitting it,” Farah said, “to myself most of all, but I really doubt we can protect him. Hell, I shouldn’t have to protect him!” She laughed after a sudden realization. “I’m not the police. I’m not a bodyguard. Why do I keep taking responsibility for everything?”

“Y’all would make some psychotherapist a very rich man. Or woman. Person. Whatever. Never understood the gradation myself,” Lilly said. “So let’s say you’ve convinced me of your incompetence. But I’m pretty sure he won’t be safe with me either.”

“This is to do with Arthur,” Roger repeated, and Lilly gave him a quick, reluctant nod. “In which case I don’t care. I’m an old man,” he said, “I don’t have much to live for anymore. My story has ended a while ago and I’ve been pushing myself through the epilogue. Now I feel like there is more to it, like there are bits of this story I haven’t seen. And I am willing to risk everything to get there. Quite literally.”

Lilly paused, as mighty beasts fought inside her for dominance. It wasn’t clear which one of the beasts won, but eventually she sighed and rolled her eyes and said:

“Okay. Sure. Whatever! If you can’t help but get involved, whatever! I’ll have to multitask. I hate this species so fucking much,” she whispered under her breath. “I hope you have a nice car that fits five people. And also a cat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good news: i'm still on a steady path with decent writing speed on the first draft  
> ? news: this fic/novel is gonna be longer than i anticipated... (70K+)  
> bad news: editing still sucks a lot so i'll stick with the "once a week" posting schedule for a while
> 
> i'll probably be done with the first draft in early December though, after which i'll try to speed up with editing as well
> 
> sorry for not answering comments, they are still so, *so* appreciated <3


	22. Chapter 22

Amanda Brotzman absolutely loved being in a car.

She loved the soft rocking lull of wheels rolling across roads. She loved pressing her forehead to the window and watching the sights blur into a colorful tapestry of nonsense. She loved falling asleep on the back seat, listening to the sound of a steadily working engine. Hell, she even loved the gas station hot dogs and the smell of leather seats and gasoline. 

She had absolutely no qualms about spending half her life in a car, as long as her friends were around and the radio was working.

And today, for the first time since she was in kindergarten, she found her mouth uttering the phrase “are we there yet?”.

She hated that; hated the pestering urge at the back of her head, gnawing at her cerebellum and pushing her towards her goal. The prophetic dreams were making her cranky; the morning was dull and hectic and the hot dogs tasted to their full extent of unforgivably horrible this time. Inside her, she had the first sparks of either a vision, an attack, or a brain-eating combination of both. She acknowledged that fact, then told her nervous system to kindly fuck off.

Everyone else noticed this, of course. Martin didn’t even let her drive, for fear of breaking the speed limits so severely, even he and his fellow vampires wouldn’t be able to deal with the fallout. When he heard her ask The Question, it instantly made him worried - and nothing ever made him worried. He ate worry. He wasn’t built for handling it himself.

“Half an hour,” Martin replied, and Amanda produced the groan of an exasperated cat who had spent an hour harassing its owner for food only to discover that Swedish fish had little to do with actual fishy fish.

“I have a bad feeling,” Amanda whispered, resting her head on the door window and slipping deeper into her front passenger seat.

“Is your brain movie giving you bad news?” Martin pondered.

“It’s not giving me anything since I woke up,” she replied, “I’m not letting it. And somehow that’s worse.”

With that reply, died Martin’s hope of Amanda’s bad news radar being off. 

  
They rolled into Seattle at half past noon and drove straight to Dirk’s apartment. This was the address that kept popping up on Amanda’s mind, so she’d assumed it was the one the Universe wanted her to visit. Alas, upon arriving there, all six of the Rowdy Three were greeted by a locked door. The door did not respond to any knocking, no matter how persuasive.

“We should try Todd’s next. And Farah’s,” Amanda said with a level of calmness that surprised even herself.

And so they checked - first Todd’s apartment, then Farah’s. Both were locked and presumably empty.

“The agency,” Amanda instructed, hearing her own almost robotic voice coming into her ears from some parallel dimension. “Now.”

Martin did not ask questions. He simply got everyone back into the van and drove to Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency office - which was locked, dark, and presumably empty.

  
No one wanted to be around Amanda when she stepped back outside. Not even the people who literally fed off strong emotions and chaos.

Of course, nothing dramatic happened when she did. She simply walked behind the building, stood defiantly near some garbage bins, raised her head to the sky and screamed. It was a short, intense, cathartic scream; it raised a flock of crows into the air but incurred no further damage or unwanted attention.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Amanda bellowed at the sky, and flipped her middle finger at it for good measure. “I come all the way here for this?!”

For a few seconds, she felt the tingling of an attack in her spine and fingertips, and pushed it away angrily. She had serious beef with the Universe and she refused to give it what it wanted.

She was engaged in some joyful kicking of garbage bins when the Rowdy decided to check up on her after all. Instead of joining in, they just stood aside respectfully. Vogel was the one brave enough to approach Amanda, stop her furious kicking, and ask her:

“Boss, what do you need? Painkillers? Codeine? Paracetamol? Vitamin C? Vitamin D? Vitamin E? Food, maybe? Bowl of soup. A nice bowl of soup? Soup and a sandwich? Soup and a little ham sandwich?..” He would have kept listing if he hadn’t ran out of breath.

“I need a triple shot iced latte and a chocolate croissant.” Amanda replied, unblinking, then pulled a joint out of her pocket, sat down on the ground, lit it up and took a deep, deep swig.

*

If the customers of the tiny, unremarkable cafe “La Belle Sauvage” knew what was going on around them, they would have surely been tweeting and texting and gossiping about it for weeks afterward. After all, it’s not every day that you share a balcony with a group of punk vampires, a magical creature from a fairytale dimension, and a witch who is far from recognizing her full power - while a band of desperate and exhausted rogue engineers watches from the opposite street. 

It wasn’t immediately obvious to passing by strangers that anything out of the ordinary was happening here. Indeed, many were already annoyed by the brewing rumors that kept popping up in various workplaces and news sources. Some even heard from their friends, neighbors and co-workers of strange things. Of perplexing and bizarre malfunctioning devices; of mysterious figures in spacesuits bumping into them at night; and of the local billionaire being allegedly poisoned half to death by his ex-girlfriend. So surely they would not be surprised by some retired alternative band going out for an afternoon coffee.

The only people who found this fairly confusing were the four rogue engineers in a “Kruk Electronics” van parked twenty meters away from “La Belle Sauvage”.

“Are you sure the signal’s not moving?” Grażyna was hovering over Dancho’s shoulder like a remarkably large, hoodie-dressed bee.

“I am sure that the signal is not moving,” he responded, “but that doesn’t mean they are not moving.” He rummaged across the floor of the van until his hand found a pair of binoculars. “I’m keeping track of all the cars. As soon as the signal shifts, I’ll be able to tell which one has the key.”

“What if they threw out keychain into a garbage bin,” Varya suggested, “and went on.”

“Uh, well,” Dancho began, then stopped. “Then we’re screwed.”

“I wish we could skip to the part where we give up and crawl to bosses on all fours and they take all of our shit away and tell us to get out,” Milena complained. “I’m tired.”

“No one’s keeping you here,” Grażyna scowled at her.

“Suuure,” she snorted with laughter, “as if I have like, a career path after this! With a five year gap on my CV? Please. Might as well go back to Kosovo.”

“You could always get a job at Trader Joe’s or something,” Varya suggested helpfully, “they always need electrical engineers with MIT degree.”

“Gotcha!” Dancho exclaimed unexpectedly, scaring even himself. “Grażyna, drive, quickly! It’s that goddamned huge ass van!”

  
The last twenty minutes of the chase were not as exciting as the previous several days. One van followed another across the half-empty midday streets, until both stopped outside the detective office building. Amanda already knew what was about to go down as she stepped outside and walked towards the office, and she did not care. She tried her best and the Universe let her down. She was now prepared to beat the living crap out of her pursuers, or get beaten up in return. The office was still locked, and no one was responding to the calls from a freshly purchased phone. The chase was over; she was ready for the fireworks. 

Sadly there were no fireworks. There was maybe a last year’s Christmas cracker level of tension and excitement, and even that would be a generous description. Four figures appeared in the empty space behind the office building and formed a line in front of the garbage bins. Six figures stepped up from the other side and assumed a formation in front of them. No one was moving; the whole scene resembled a stand-off between Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol factions of a public kindergarten.

“Give us the key,” Grażyna said.

“No,” Amanda replied, smiling warmly. 

“So you admit you have it then?!” Dancho exclaimed. 

“I admit to nothing,” Amanda shrugged. “But you ain’t getting what you want.”

“We’ll take it by force,” Grażyna was trying to persuade herself of this more than anyone else.

“Go on then,” Amanda prompted, glancing sideways. She felt strong. She felt confident. Her friends had their baseball bats and gold clubs of choice ready and were waiting for her signal. She reached into her jacket and pulled out her magic wand - a secret ace literally up her sleeve saved up for special occasions. “Please feel free to attack whenever you feel like it,” said Amanda.

“Yeah just give us two minutes,” said Grażyna.

“Is that a fucking magic wand in your hand?” said Milena.

That concluded their first round. There was a pause. Cars passed by on the street to their left, and crows cawed impatiently above them. 

“So…” Amanda was really struggling to maintain the fighting mood. “Do you have that knife you mentioned?” she asked.

“Fuck around and find out,” Varya beamed. She had waited a long, long time to use that phrase and was ready to leave now, since all her expectations of what a gang standoff would be like have already been fulfilled.

“Are you sure you’re a mafia?” Martin rubbed the back of his head with the handle of a baseball bat and squinted at the group.

“Who told you we are a mafia?” Dancho scoffed. “We’re, uhm, we’re IT people? We work with computers and tech and… stuff?”

“Are we gonna beat each other up or what?” Vogel asked. “Hey boss, can I kick that one with glasses already? I really want to kick something.” And he made the first move towards Dancho, which made all four of the Slavic not-mafia step back in quiet panic. 

“You can kick some bins,” Amanda suggested helpfully, “as a warm-up, you know? I’ve already started over there. Now guys, come on,” she turned back towards Grażyna and her friends, “can you deal the first punch? Cause they’ll go off on the nearest shop any second now.”

“You know what? Very funny,” Grażyna exclaimed unexpectedly, tears in her voice though not yet on her face, “go on, beat us up, we deserve it. God, what the hell do you even need with that key? And actually how did you end up in there in the first place? I mean, sure, so did we five years ago, but it took us two weeks to build up the courage to even call the elevator! And you’re what, stumbled upon a secret dungeon in the middle of a desert and immediately decided to go down and investigate?”

“Yeah pretty much,” Amanda nodded nonchalantly, conveniently omitting the fact of her legs and arms being guided in more ways than one.

“Well I hope that thing ruins your life like it ruined ours!” Grażyna continued, angry tears appearing in her eyes after all. “Why did I ever think we had it in us to do that stuff? What kind of insane idiot even messes with clearly alien technology?! Me. I’m the idiot,” she laughed nervously, very close to a total mental breakdown, “on so many accounts. I could have stayed put. I could have been working on algorithms that make preteens addicted to Instagram right now, in my own office, instead of, ugh,” she waved her hands around, “this! Come on then just punch me already,” she urged, taking a step towards Amanda.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Amanda began, “we can work this out! Just… just…” she paused mid-word as the wretched tingling and sweat hit her like a sledgehammer. “Not now!” she thought angrily to herself, trying hard to fight off what could with equal probability be an attack, a vision, or both.

“You okay drummer?” Martin was already near her, baseball bat abandoned on the concrete.

“I’m fine,” Amanda assured him - then collapsed unconscious on the ground.

*

Two seconds after she closed her eyes in the dumpster behind the detective agency office, Amanda opened her eyes in Friedkin’s backyard garden, right in the middle of his flowerbed of petunias.

“Aaargh!” yelled Friedkin, dropping a full water can on his toes and splashing the water all over himself.

“What the crap?!” Amanda yelled back.

“You!” Friedkin gasped, vanishing the water off his trousers with one swift motion of his hand. “You’re Amanda Brotzman!”

“And you’re…” she hesitated, “you’re the guy who held me at gunpoint in front of the Rowdys?”

“What are you doing in my garden?”

“What am I… what are you doing in my prophetic vision inside of my pararibulitis attack?”

“What?” Friedkin said, “No! I’m not inside anyone’s attack. Look around. Look at me.”

And she did - which is when she noticed that everything around her was exceedingly strange - soft, shimmering, ever so slightly translucent - like a very realistic, tangible 3D projection. And Friedkin… Friedkin’s eyes were filled with fractals, patterns breaking up into smalled patterns, forever and ever without end.

Also there was more than one Friedkin, but the other two were very quiet and unwilling to engage, so that was beside the point.

“I’m in the backstage of reality,” Amanda muttered. “What the hell are you doing in the backstage of reality?!”

“Well I was weeding the lawn before you, like, totally crushed my petunias!” he retorted, “also, I live here!”

“Why the…” she began, but decided that it was beyond her comprehension at the moment. “Okay, so this is new. I guess I suppressed an attack so hard, it kicked me in here somehow. I was…” she rubbed her temples, thinking, “I was in a middle of a, a thing! With those people, the Slavic engineering mafia…”

“Oh the gang?” Friedkin beamed. “I know them! I love watching them, hilarious. Don’t worry about them, they’re, like, well, not on your side, but they have the same enemies as you.”

“I have enemies?” Evidently this was news to Amanda.

“You all do,” Friedkin nodded, “you, that gang, the professor, the billionaire, Dirk…”

“Dirk!” Amanda exclaimed suddenly. “Can you… you look into our world, right?”

“I can look,” he confirmed, “but I can’t go there, which is interesting, cause you…”

“Shut up!” she instructed. “Now do your… reality window or whatever you do to watch us and show me Dirk. Now!”

“Alright, fine,” he muttered, shaking his head in frustration. “No matter how challenging the situation is, there is no need to shout.” And he conjured the Universe TV along with the remote out of thin air. “Here, there’s your Dirk,” he said, pointing at the screen. “In a car with that Lilly girl, and professor, and others.”

“Where are they going?”

“To the spaceship, of course.”

“Ugh not again,” Amanda hissed, “you’re telling me I have to drive all the way back there five minutes after I arrived?!”

“Hey, so while you’re here,” Friedkin began, “can I like, ask you some things? About the real world?”

“Don’t… don’t annoy me right now, dude,” she waved the request away, “I’m… I think I’m gonna wake up soon so just tell me - what in the name of hell is going on down there and what am I supposed to do?”

“Pff,” Friedkin said, “how should I know? I’m not God and stuff. I know there are these bosses, and they’re the bad guys, but also there was a bloke called Arthur and, like,” he chuckled to himself, “you won’t believe what happened to him…”

But just as Friedkin was about to enlighten her, Amanda felt herself fall backwards through static and woke up gasping on concrete, the figures of her vampire friends looming over her.

“And she’s back,” Martin smiled, as she sat gasping and panting on the concrete. He reached into his jacket for a spare portion of her pills, but she pushed him away.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she muttered, already trying to get up. “You!” she exclaimed, standing shakily, pointing at the gang of terrified and exhausted engineers propping up the garbage bins to the side. “You’re idiots! If you could just have a conversation with me, a normal fucking conversation, we would have known that we’re on the same side and that we’re both in danger.”

“Did God speak to you during your epileptic seizure?” Grażyna asked.

“It wasn’t God, it was just some himbo,” Amanda replied, “but yeah. Yeah I spoke to someone. And you’re not getting your key. You’re getting into your van, and we’re getting into our van, so we’re both getting into our respective vans and, ugh, can’t believe I’m saying this, but we’re going back exactly from where we started.”

“Back to the spaceship?” Grażyna frowned.

“Yes,” Amanda nodded, “back to the god-forsaken spaceship…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have only five chapters left to write, my dudes. only five! i can't believe it but i am finally getting close to actually finishing this novel,,,, i'm already over 65K on the word count and the finished product will probably be around 75K :D
> 
> editing still sucks though so i'm on the weekly posting schedule till i finish the first draft. thank you for commenting even when i don't reply and cheers!


	23. Chapter 23

Supervisor Ken Adams was the kind of person to ask all the questions first and shoot you later, and, for some of his victims, this method was almost worse than doing the reverse. 

There frankly isn’t a way you can hurt a corpse further, no matter how much incriminating information you could get out of them before you shoot. There is, however, a wonderful world of pain available to you in a living, breathing subject and in all the relevant knowledge extracted from them with the right questions.

Every day, Ken woke up and asked himself two crucial questions: what are my long-term goals, and what can I do today to move closer towards those goals. And every day, the first answer remained the same, and the second arrived to his mind quickly and with little effort. 

The tasks were always set before breakfast and they were always completed before dinner. Supervisor Adams did not make mistakes; everything in his life was optimized and tailored to his one-track mind, every obstacle carefully removed until he could see his path as clearly as his own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

He had great things in him. Absolutely remarkable things. And as long as he could keep his eyes on those things, everything was possible - with enough time, effort, and possibly also some bribes, or blackmail, and just a pinch of coercion perhaps. Supervisor Adams was versatile in his use of productivity tools.

The mornings were always the same. He would wake up, go through his fifteen minute meditation, then dress up for the day and head straight for his office. He kept his Black Wing facility room - with a thorough refurbishing which suited the Supervisor, of course - which eliminated a commute and gave him an extra hour of work time each day. 

Always, in his office, his assistant was already waiting for him with his coffee (black, no sugar) and a single printed page of filtered, condensed information. He would read through it while drinking the coffee and decide which points he wanted clarification on, and which were outside his interest zone. It was the assistant’s job to deal with everything else. 

The hours between 9am and noon where the most efficient for Ken. This is when he invented, contemplated and decided; when he signed off people’s lives with a brush of ink against paper and launched whole teams into action with a single click of his mouse. All his meetings were piled on just before lunch. This was strategic too, since no person in their right mind would stretch out a meeting beyond reason risking a cut out of their lunch time. So, in the end, it benefited everyone and left Ken minimally annoyed after such meetings.

But today was different.

  
“You are late, madam colonel,” were the first words to come out of Ken’s mouth as he invited her into his office. It was a throw-off, tongue-in-cheek comment - but it did not fly well with Jessica Wilson.

“I make the rules here, supervisor,” she responded with a cold smile, “the time of our meeting is whenever I arrive. So I am never late. Very convenient, you see.”

“As you wish,” Ken shrugged, taking his own seat after her. He knew that the less emotion he showed, the more confident he seemed. If he could just pretend not to care, it immediately gave him an upper hand no matter what happened. This is why, instead of being anxious about the sudden decision to visit him in his own facility, he decided to push on with cheeky confidence. “Are you here to congratulate me on my work with the Russians?”

“I would, if there was something to congratulate on,” she retorted coldly. “And why I’m here is very simple, Adams. I am a landlady and I come for my rent.”

“Complex metaphor, madam colonel,” Ken raised an eyebrow. “Are you implying I do not deliver with my program?”

“You do not deliver enough, Adams, or of the right quality, or both,” she said. “When I gave you this job, I had the impression that you’re the kind of person who gets things done. I thought you’d be the one to finally turn this wretched place into a functioning facility instead of a circus freak show for the CIA. And what happened next? You rebuilt everything in here according to your own unsubstantiated theories, you fired half the personnel, including one of our most respected veterans, Mr. Priest…”

“Priest was a liability, not an asset…”

“…and somehow formed the idea that you are the most important person in the entire investigative branch of the US government. And based on what? The Bersberg portal disappeared mysteriously before you managed to conduct any research, the boat that you commissioned to take apart bit by bit turned out to be a regular boat, and nothing came out of the supposedly magical metal alloys either!”

“Last time I checked,” Ken interrupted again, quickly losing his calm, “my facility was delivering results above the rates of any other CIA department. The Bolivian coup being the most recent example.”

“I am not saying you don’t get anything done,” she shook her head sternly, “but I am saying that it is disproportionate to the amount of money we are funneling into your facility. No other department is asking for the budgets as high as yours but churning out results at such low and unpredictable rates.”

“But we’re different, ma’am!” Ken had to physically stop himself from raising his voice. “You know better than anyone else who has ever worked in the Black Wing program that our assets are, by definition, highly unpredictable and hard to control. May I also remind that I am the only Black Wing Supervisor in the history of the department who has had no accidents, no escapes, and no unsuccessful captures on record?”

“I am not denying that either. I know you’ve come closest out of everyone to actually making this madhouse into a useful asset. But I’m afraid I have people above me who are starting to lose hope for the whole premise.”

“Well,” Ken muttered, deciding he no longer had anything to lose, “we’re on the verge of a major breakthrough. I believe we have a good chance of bringing in a project that has nearly unlimited commercial and strategic potential and will surely persuade people at the top in the viability of this operation.”

“Promises, promises, supervisor,” she said calmly. “I want evidence. I want results. You have until the end of this month to give me something to bargain with, or I’m afraid you will have to go directly to the higher-ups and argue your case for yourself. And remember, Adams,” she added, already getting up to leave, “you were a prisoner here once. No reason you can’t become a prisoner again.”

*

“Promises…” Ken muttered, marching through the corridor after a skipped lunch and three hours of intense work without a single break. “Things to bargain with,” he added, heading for the Black Wing Facility Gamma with a large paper bag in his hand. “Who does she think she is?” he asked no-one in particular while fumbling for the access card with his left hand. “I’ll never be a prisoner again,” he whispered to himself, and unlocked the door to Bart’s cell. 

“Hey Bart!” he beamed from the threshold. “I brought McDonald's!”

He decided even before he came in that he would not, under any circumstances, mention Project Prometheus, or his own investigation on it, or the remarkably unpleasant conversation he’s had just a few hours prior. He lasted for approximately seventeen minutes before he brought all of those things up in that exact order. 

He wasn’t quite sure how it had happened; first, Bart was explaining to him how you can create at least a hundred new french fry sauces by combining already existing sauces, and the next he was talking about leads and scrapped evidence and how much he wanted to drill a hole in colonel Wilson’s head and peer inside in search of the hell engine that was running her thought process and personality.

Bart listened carefully, chewing on her cherry pie, and did not say anything until he was almost done.

“…and I know I’m grasping at straws,” Ken carried on, “but then I have three separate sources confirming the Californian location on top of like a dozen witness reports so there must be something there, right?” He was looking at her, mad vigor in his eyes, genuinely expecting her to weigh in and give her opinion.

And she realized this, strangely, that he wasn’t talking to the wall or using her as an unhinged psychotherapist with questionable methods. He actually wanted her opinion. He actually cared. At least one part of Ken, Bart realized, still actively cared about her and what she thought about Black Wing and his work and the exciting research field of inventing sauces for french fries. 

“Ken, I was thinking,” she began, watching every muscle in his face for any indication of pure emotion, “your apartment… do you think you still have one?”

“I’m sorry, what?” he chuckled. “You’re into real estate now?”

“It doesn’t have to be your old apartment,” she continued, hand rubbing her sleeve nervously, “can be a new house. We could run away from here, and buy a house, and live there, maybe? In Miami. Or New Jersey. Or one of those stupid-sounding towns…”

“Bart, wait,” he was now half-smiling, half-frowning, several different feelings mixing on his face like week-old ingredients at the back of a fridge, forming a perplexing salad of various emotions, “…what are you saying, exactly?”

“I’m saying that you don’t need all this bullshit,” she lost her patience, “I’m saying we could live in a house and be friends and travel around and have McDonald's and be happy. And I could work in a shop selling dresses and you could have a not madeup girlfriend and it would be different. Better. Not like this.”

“Bart…” he smiled sadly, and shook his head. “But this, this is my life now. I am about to do such great things and I am so close!” he laughed in excitement, expecting her to laugh with him, but her face was blank. “Hey, cheer up,” he pleaded with her, “we’ll be friends anyway, yes?”

She looked away, one foot scratching the floor, and thought. The thought was “well, that was worth a shot.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“Sorry for what?”

“I wanted to kill you and then I didn’t and it felt right,” she explained, “like the universe wanted me to, so I didn’t kill you, but I think I did kill you, just not how I usually kill people. And I’m sorry. I’m trying to be better.”

“You didn’t kill me,” Ken chuckled, slight shade of puzzlement on his face, “you’ve made me better! I’ve learned so much from you, Bart. And anyway, since when are you all into personal reflection? Is that clairvoyant friend of yours teaching you Freud or something?”

“Forget it,” Bart dismissed. “Your project whatever… you should go. I think you’re onto something there.”

“You really think that?” 

“Yeah I really think that. And you should go and check it out yourself. Don’t let anyone else mess it up. It’s your thing. Get your thing.”

“Thanks,” he smiled warmly, stealing the last fry from the paper bag, “for believing in me. Really. I appreciate it.”

“Sure, fine,” she smirked. “Go do your thing and stop stealing my fries!”

They kept smiling at each other up until the door clicked behind him. Then both became grim and stern at once.

“Get me a car,” Ken yelled at the nearest passing by employee. “I want to leave immediately.”

“Where to, Supervisor, sir?”

“Not sure yet. Some place in the Californian desert.”

  
She didn’t wait long after he left. Having finished her cherry pie and pocketed the toy, Bart got up from the table and went straight for her bathroom, where she reached for the ventilation shaft. She removed the cover, stuck her hand inside, and grabbed a spoon that was hidden in it. With the spoon, she banged on the metal pipes until she got the reply back.

The banging pipe code was very simple and contained only about a dozen of phrases, but on this occasion, she only needed one word. Three hits, a pause, another hit. 

“Today.”

Soon, back came the other message, which made Bart smile ear to ear and forget, at least for a moment, the stinging sensation of loss from that puzzled look she got from Ken a few minutes ago. He made his choice; her new friends made theirs.

On the other end of the pipe system, every single one of them was bashing a different signal, same word over and over reverberating across the shiny pipes.

The sound was hideous, but also full of joy, and the word was “revolution”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the regular update on my progress: i am *so* close. i have two and a half chapters left to write and i will probably get that done within the next few days. i will start editing quicker after that, and switch to posting new chapters more often. expect the whole novel to be up before December ends :D
> 
> and thank you as always for support! i see the comments, i will reply to questions at some point, and i appreciate every single reader very much <3


	24. Chapter 24

The path to answers was long and dark and not particularly twisted, but frequently interrupted due to sudden inexplicable thirst for Dr Pepper (followed by an equally sudden but rather more explicable need to pee). 

There were five of them in the car, except there was really six of them. The sixth - after Dirk, Todd, Farah, Roger and Lilly - was a shiny black cat with curious eyes. He sat like a gentleman in his ordinary carry box which was passed around in the car from one passenger to another. Inside the box, he was indifferent towards his circumstances. Outside of the box, he, for some peculiar reason, gravitated towards Dirk, making sure to rub against his leg every time he was let out to stretch his paws and drink some water. All the other humans, including his temporary owner Lilly, the black cat ignored.

Dirk himself did not find this in any way peculiar.

“Cats love me,” he explained, petting the cat’s plush soft fur, “fish fear me. Women have complex, multidimensional opinions on me.”

Todd had much to say about this remark but decided that none of those words were worth the oxygen it would take to produce them. 

They drove relentlessly and without pause, rotating the driver seat every few hours. They drove till the sun set on Friday and the stars came out blinking in the sky that stretched out into infinity above the bare American roads. At 3am, with Lilly at the wheel, they drove through a sudden thunderstorm that drowned the dry asphalt and made the entire world look like one glimmering fountain. 

When the thunder woke him up for a moment, Todd discovered that his head was resting on Dirk’s shoulder, possibly for quite some time; Dirk himself was asleep through the rain. Todd glanced sideways at Farah, whose head rested in the nook between the seats and the door. She looked perfectly comfortable there - on her own, but safe and close to her friends. “Shouldn’t disturb her,” Todd thought. Then he moved even closer to Dirk, put his head back on Dirk’s shoulder, and fell asleep. 

At 5am, Lilly stopped to get the tank refilled with gas, and returned to the car to find Dirk standing near it, looking like he was either about to discover the answer to a thousand year old philosophical dilemma or pass out from severe sleep deprivation.

“I haven’t noticed petrol getting so expensive,” she commented, stuffing her credit card into the back pocket of her jeans. “One plus of not having a car anymore, I guess. Don’t have to keep track of fuel price. You smoke?” she asked, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of a different pocket.

“Quit a long time ago,” Dirk replied, but accepted the cigarette nonetheless.

“Likewise,” she smiled with the corner of her mouth and lit up a match. “Horrible stuff,” she added,passing on the match box. “I used to go through two-three packs a week, back in the day.”

“I used to smoke first time in the morning,” Dirk said, taking a deep swig and letting out a cloud of smoke out of his mouth, “wake up, then immediately reach for some. That got replaced by my phone. At least reddit doesn’t cause literal cancer.”

“I didn’t even know they caused cancer when I started,” Lilly told him.

“Isn’t it basically common knowledge these days?”

“Well,” she chuckled briefly, “I also thought that did not apply to me… the cancer or the addiction.”

“And why would that be?” Dirk raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” she said again, and didn’t say anything more. 

For a few moments, they just stood side by side and smoked, trapped in the obscure, liminal dimension of five in the morning, when the new day is not yet thoroughly rendered, and the rising sun can seep through the cracks in reality and expose its flaws. These are the hours when the most car crashes happen; when annoyingly successful people wake up and some less successful but altogether more interesting people go to bed; when writers come up with brilliant lines while getting up to get a glass of water and inevitably forget them while on their way back to their bedrooms and produce sequences of curses that are sometimes even better than the line they originally had in mind.

“I can take over and drive,” Dirk suggested, extinguishing his cigarette against a nearby lamp post. “I’ve had some sleep.”

“Please no,” Lilly shook her head, smiling. “If you will be driving, no one else will get any sleep. It’s fine. I’m not tired. Get back in the car to your boyfriend.”

“Todd is not my boyfriend,” Dirk replied without a millisecond delay. “Why would you even say that?!” he added, sounding offended all of a sudden, “he has a girlfriend, still, I think, and he’s straight, I think, and I don’t even like him like that?” he said, then, going through a series of perplexing facial expressions in under three seconds, added a final meek: “I think?”

“Jeez, dude,” Lilly snorted with laughter, “that’s a whole lot of reaction for your straight and unavailable friend that you don’t even like Like That. It was a joke,” she explained. “Get back into the car.”

She did not joke like that ever again, to the massive relief of Dirk who had experienced a very strange emotion upon waking up and discovering Todd’s head resting on his shoulder, and was not at all interested in trying to have that emotion dissected, examined, and cataloged for future reference.

He was quite happy returning to his seat and letting himself drift back to sleep, in a strange, comfortable bundle of limbs with Todd and Farah, the shiny black cat curled up on his lap.

  
The car rolled into the state of California a couple hours later, and stopped one final time for coffee, breakfast, and a rushed discussion of what they would do if they were to encounter any unexpected guests. At the roadside diner, they were greeted by a waitress who was either an 80 year old with a solid skincare routine or a ghost so caught up in her job that she didn’t even notice her own death. The coffee was about as horrible as they anticipated; the breakfast was actually worse than that, failing to meet the already floor-low bar of expectation and confidently dunking under it.

“So just as a quick summary,” Dirk said, finally managing to cut through his pancake after a solid minute of effort, “the basics of every strategy is just leave you behind…”

“…and run the fuck away, yes,” Lilly smiled and nodded in a manner practiced by talented kindergarten teachers to reward their 4 year old students for good behaviour. “The crux is how you run away. That’s what I’m trying to explain.”

“Doesn’t sound right,” Roger pointed out, “to leave you risking your life for our sake.”

“No, no,” she sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose, “Roger, you’re missing the point. They will never harm me. I’m not the one risking my life here, you are. And for a stupid ass reason too,” she laughed shortly, “who even cares about answers? Just do what I do when I am faced with unsolvable dilemmas - get a new hobby and wait till you no longer care about them.”

“What if we won’t be able to run away?” Dirk asked.

“Well,” Lilly shrugged, “keep quiet and hope for the best?”

This answer highlighted a few different questions in Dirk’s head, but he decided to focus on his new hobby of chewing through the pancakes, and wait for it to go away.

  
The rest of the journey was rather disappointing. They were not chased, or ambushed, or interrupted in any way. The road through the desert was empty and smooth, and they did not pass by a single other car, which felt almost ominous somehow. The closer they got to the point Lilly had selected on google maps, the tenser the atmosphere became. All that it was lacking was a background soundtrack of an approaching boss fight.

“I think I see something…” Dirk muttered, leaning over the passenger seat to peek through the windshield. “Nope that’s just an ugly looking cactus. Eh,” he wrinkled his nose as they passed it by, “something’s wrong with that cactus. Looks like it has been beaten to death. Oh, wait, now I really see something,” he exclaimed, leaning so far into the gap between the front seats that he could almost reach the pedals with his hands. “A van! No, two vans!”

There were, indeed, two vans ahead of them. One would not be in any way suspicious in a normal urban setting, but seemed comically out of place in the middle of a sandy wasteland. And the other, well, the other was…

“Rowdy Three van?!” it was Todd’s turn to produce sounds overloaded with a dizzying range of emotion. “But how the hell…”

“Splendid.” Lilly shook her head, jumping out of the car a few second before Farah killed the engine. “Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant.”

Todd, Dirk and Farah leaped out of their seats in quick succession. Roger was the only one to stay close to the car, the carry box with Erwin the cat pressed tightly to his chest.

“Hey!” Todd yelled, banging his fist on the side of the Rowdy van. “Anyone home?”

“I don’t think they are,” Dirk mused, examining the other van. “This one’s seems empty too.”

“Hey!” Lilly shouted, then whistled for good measure to attract their attention. “This is the thing,” she said, kicking a random sandy hill with the tip of her shoe. “There’s an elevator inside and I’m going down.”

“We are going down,” Farah corrected.

“Yeah but are you sure?” Lilly was already in the process of digging out the elevator door. “There are people down there. A lot of people, possibly. A lot of people fully prepared to rip your heads clean off. Possibly.”

“My sister is down there, wherever that is,” Todd interrupted. “My sister, who is a badass punk witch,” he added for good measure. “And she has a gang of psychic vampires and a feral faerie woman. So I really doubt we’d be in trouble.”

“Maybe the other gang is keeping your sister and her magical friends captive,” Lilly suggested, somehow utterly not fazed by the information Todd just disclosed. “Have you considered that?”

“Nonsense,” Dirk spoke up confidently. “Everything will be just fine. Splendid. Most wonderful. Tickety-boo.”

“Well I’ve warned you,” Lilly shrugged, calling up the elevator. “You too, Roger?”

“I did not come all the way here to stay outside, thank you very much,” he nodded.

“Fine. Sure,” she stepped inside the elevator, followed one by one by everyone else. “Whatever.”

  
The ride down wasn’t as long as it seemed; in fact, it would be impossible for it to be as long as it seemed, because that would break the rules of Einstein’s general relativity and immediately grant the elevator a Nobel prize in physics. Before that day, Dirk did not know that awkward silences could feel thick enough to be spread on toast like some sort of heavily processed American snack. Of course it only got worse when they exited the elevator, because they were met with a whole crowd of people staring intently at them, bracing themselves for the worst and wielding various makeshift weapons.

A lot of names were called out immediately after they stepped out of the elevator. Names such as:

“Amanda?”

“Dirk!”

“Todd Brotzman from the Mexican Funeral?”

“Professor Roger Daly of the Cooltown University?”

“Amanda!”

“Todd?”

“Spaceship thieves!”

and

“Bibbit!”. 

After the the calling out of names, there were some hugs, some handshakes, a kiss on a cheek, and even an autograph signing. Then, after the pleasantries were done with, came an avalanche of questions from both sides which were answered in a timely manner with varying levels of success. The general atmosphere of the reunion was that of bewilderment and cautious optimism, and the conversation moved smoothly towards figuring out some sort of unified understanding and plan of action.

“So you’re the people who have been stealing from me for the last five years or so huh?” Lilly was very determined to seem tough with Slavic Mafia, which was difficult to pull off for someone who looked like a 17 year old girl with pigtails. “I am severely disappointed. Has no one ever taught you manners?”

“We’re all Eastern European,” Dancho shrugged, “theft is included in our manners.”

Dirk tried to not laugh at that, but it didn’t pan out.

“Well, let’s go and see how much you have wrecked and damaged, huh?” Lilly suggested, walking confidently towards the spaceship. “Also give me back my key.”

“Yes, well, about that,” Grażyna began, “we don’t actually have the key.”

“It’s fine, we do,” Amanda said before Lilly had a chance to get angry again. “Beast, give it to me, please. Beast?”

Beast was standing nearby and looking at Amanda in confusion.

“Oh, come on,” Amanda urged, “the thing with a keyring charm? The pink one?”

“Ah,” Beast smiled, then proceeded to sign something quite rapidly at Amanda.

“Uhhh,” Amanda frowned, “I’m… not… hey Vogel? Can you translate real quick for me?”

“Sure thing boss!” he turned towards Beast and asked her to repeat. “Okay, yes, okay. It’s simple, boss,” he beamed, “she doesn’t have it!”

“She… why doesn’t she have it?!” Amanda was suddenly on the verge of either hysterical laughter or a long awaited mental breakdown. “She’s the one who took it!”

“She says she traded it for something better on our way back from Seattle,” Vogel translated further.

“Baby!” Beast exclaimed, and fished a tamagochi out of her pocket, showing it to Amanda with pride and love in her eyes. “My child,” she sighed enthusiastically, and proceeded to check up on the tamagochi.

“I’m not going to lie to you, people,” Amanda muttered, “I really feel like murdering someone right now.”

“You mean we came all way back here for nothing?” Varya asked. “I threatened you with knife… for nothing?”

“Like I’ve suspected,” Lilly shook her head, “humans are useless. Lucky for you, I come prepared for every possible outcome.”

She took her bag off of her shoulder, put it down in the ground, and rummaged through it until she found what she was looking for - a small music box decorated with brass leaves and vines. Roger watched her closely, eyes wide, but didn’t dare say anything. Lilly did not comment either. Instead, she spent some time tinkering with the music box, until some compartment in it clicked, and out popped a small, ordinary looking key.

“Good on me for keeping a spare, huh?” Lilly smiled.

“I wish I had better words to express my feelings,” Dirk said, looking at every person in the cave one by one, “but I think I’ll have to lean expressive rather than coherent. So… what, indeed, the actual fuck had just happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've had an exhausting week so have not been able to finish the first draft of the last two chapters, but i am close enough, so i'm hoping that next week i'll start posting new chapters more often. no promises though, as i am mostly just very tired. constantly. but i am writing. so i'll get there eventually.
> 
> thank you, as usual, to every one tuning in, and hope this chapter did not have too many mistakes cause i didn't manage a fourth read-through/edit, but hopefully it is still enjoyable


	25. Chapter 25

Professor Roger Daly had, up until that moment, lived a long, fulfilling, intense life of discovery and dedicated search for knowledge. He had seen many things; he watched the world get significantly better in some ways and abysmally worse in others, and even participated in the first category. He always strove to understand more, but became quite comfortable with the prospect of not knowing. He realized, as a mature, experienced scientist, that some mysteries of the universe would not be resolved - in his lifetime or ever - and learned to co-exist in peace with that notion. He could look a question in the eyes and remain calm in virtually any circumstance... apart from that very moment.

“I say, young lady,” he babbled, watching in bewilderment as Lilly stuffed the music box back into her bag and inserted the key into the door of what looked like an over-sized electric bus, “explain yourself immediately! How in the world did you come in possession of that thing?”

“Roger, please,” she looked briefly at him, genuine distress and concern in her eyes, “just… later! Listen, y’all,” she added, as the door opened and she stepped over the threshold, “I’m sure you have a ton of stupid questions that you’d love to throw at me, but it is vital for you to understand that I have better things to do! Namely, oh fucking hell,” she muttered, and stepped carefully over a chunk of metal resting on the floor, “this. This… mess! I sure hope you didn’t get into the engine room,” she said at the Slavic Mafia.

“We didn’t feel qualified,” Grażyna responded. 

“Didn’t stop you from scavenging half of this ship, you rascals.” Lilly wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I swear to Satan, if you took anything even close to important…” she didn’t finish that sentence, which produced an even more impressive effect than any threat could do. “Right. Brilliant. I have maybe a day to patch this up before they will be here. Good thing I can fix literally anything.”

“They?” Dirk asked, but she waved at him to shut up.

“Repairs first, questions later,” she reminded with a fake smile. “Feel free to poke around,” she added, unlocking the trap door that led down into the main part of the spaceship. “Just don’t touch anything. Please.”

  
The rest of the day had confusing energy, to say the least. Everyone in the cave except Lilly - and there were a lot of them (humans, not quite humans, and pets) tried their best to find a normal activity or conversation topic, and everyone failed miserably, though to various extents. 

After their information exchange, Dirk quickly lost interest in either the Rowdy 3 or the Slavic Mafia. Or, to be more precise, he didn’t have much to discuss with the Rowdy and actively avoided the engineers. They all only had one conversation which he used up on explaining language families to Todd.

“If you’re all from Slavic countries, how come you speak English to each other?” Todd asked them, which made Dirk and every single one of the engineers roll their eyes in unison.

“They’re all different languages?” Dancho said.

“Yes, Todd,” Dirk agreed, not angry but disappointed, “they’re all very different languages.”

“We have four here,” Grażyna explained, “Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian.”

“Ah,” Dirk forced a polite smile, “који?”

Milena raised her arm slowly, unsure whether she was willing to step into whatever interaction would follow next.

“Oдакле?” Dirk added, while Todd watched half-confused, half-amazed. “Ја сам из Београда. Првобитно. Вероватно”

“Са косова,” Milena replied, which produced a look of sympathy on Dirk’s phase. “Немој,” she told him immediately. “Well nice talk!”

“Indeed,” Dirk agreed, and stared at Todd until he came up with a polite reason to walk away.

“Well that was… tense,” Todd commented when they retreated back to the other side of the cave. “What did she say?”

“That she’s from a place that was an active war-zone when I was a child, where my people could have very well been murdering her people, or the other way round,” he explained.

“Ah,” Todd said, and did not bring it up again.

  
While Erwin the cat chased spiders in the cave and the engineers were pouring black tea with lemon for the psychic vampires, Dirk found himself in of the rooms of the spaceship. He found it surprisingly easy to accept that this was indeed a thing for traveling through space he was walking around. He also accepted calmly that several of the people he was now acquainted with were likely aliens, though he hadn’t yet decided which ones. 

He did not find the inside of the spaceship tremendously exciting either. Really, Dirk reasoned, it wasn’t much different from a decently sized yacht - except it traveled through the cosmos instead of the sea and probably had technology that humans could not even dream of. He was a bit more interested in the kitchen though, and was tremendously disappointed with the range of snacks that the food-printing machine had to offer.

“Exploring as well, professor?” Dirk asked, noticing Roger on the awkwardly shaped couch at the opposite end of the room.

“Mm?” professor, who was engaged in careful examination of what was either a toaster or an incredibly powerful energy weapon, looked up in confusion. “Oh, yes. Yes. I am exploring.”

“Can I join you?”

“Please do, son,” Roger smiled warmly, moving over to let Dirk sit. “Crazy day. Extraordinary, fantastic day,” he mused. “I always knew there are things in this world I had no idea about. Never thought I’d get to see them though.”

“So your friend Lilly,” Dirk said, shifting the conversation confidently into his own area of interest, “you know her how?”

“Lilly just… showed up in the institute on day,” he shrugged. “Replaced the previous cleaner, Mrs Daniels, after she retired to spend more time with grandkids. Lilly is very good at her job. Yes,” he nodded to himself, “she keeps the institute in order. Since first day, it’s like she knew it in and out already.”

“And she’s smart too, right?” Dirk said. “With your topic, with physics?”

“Lilly attends classes and lectures, she must be a very fast learner. Naturally talented.”

“Did she had access to your things, Roger?” Dirk continued. “She took the music box somehow.”

“Quite mysterious, that,” he shook his head. “Out of all people, never would have thought she would be the one to steal it from me.”

“Well, between you and me, professor,” Dirk told him, “I don’t think she stole it. I think,” he paused, “I am quite sure, actually, that she really is trying to protect you.”

“That’s the thing,” Roger sighed, “I believe that. I just wish she would tell me. What? Why?” he tugged on his ear anxiously. “She’s acting differently, too. Like she is a new person all of a sudden. And I’m seeing… something, in that new person. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. And it’s driving me insane.”

“Me too, prof,” Dirk agreed. “Me too.”

Somewhere on the opposite side of the spaceship in what was either a bathroom or a greenhouse for alien plants, Todd and Amanda were having a very different kind of conversation.

“Catch-up recap?” Todd suggested. “Not much on my side other than two breakups and three reconciliations with Farah.”

“What’s you current status?” Amanda smirked. “Asking for myself.”

“Together.”

“Sure. And where is she right now, exactly?”

“How should I know?” he shrugged. “She’s her own person.”

“That’s the thing,” Amanda replied, “she’s very independent and you’re hella clingy. Don’t shake your head, it’s true!” she laughed. “Remember college? Remember Mellisa Borowski? You picked your subjects exclusively according to what she was taking.”

“That was a long time ago,” Todd dismissed, “I’ve changed a million times since then. Anyway, I’ve already told you about the previous case…”

“…the one with the talking frog?”

“Yeah. So. What have you been up to?”

“This and that,” Amanda smiled with the corner of her mouth, “took part in a bunch of protests. Beat up some neonazis with the guys that one time. Accidentally transported my mind into a parallel dimension through a pararibulitis attack.”

“Pretty typical couple of months then.”

“Yeah, pretty standard. I have this… thing,” she began, then decided mid sentence she didn’t want to talk about it after all. “Doesn’t matter.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then, Todd spoke up.

“So I’m, um,” he stuttered for a few seconds, “I have a, uh, strange question?”

“Please go on, I am intrigued already.”

“Do you think…” he started, changed his mind several times over, then finally blurted out: “Do you think I could be bisexual?”

All Amanda could do in response to that was laugh.

“Sorry! Sorry. I’m just,” she snickered again, “why are you asking me this?”

“I don’t know!” Todd genuinely didn’t know himself, so it was difficult to give any other answer. “We grew up together. You know stuff about me, right?”

“Todd, I mean this as nicely as possible, but you need psychotherapy.”

“Should it concern me that you’re not the only person who told me that?”

They both looked at each other, dead serious, then burst into a laugh simultaneously.

“Well I’m flattered you wanna discuss it with me rather than with yourself,” Amanda responded eventually. “Let’s see then. You were in seventh grade, I was in preschool I think, and I asked you why you had a poster of some alien dude above your bed on the ceiling, and you told me that it was the most amazing human being in history. That was David Bowie. You had a poster of half-naked David Bowie hanging above your bed.”

“I appreciated him for his talent!” Todd replied.

“Okay, alright. What about Colin?”

“Colin was my best friend.”

“You carved Colin’s name into our garden bench and when mum started yelling at you about it, you said that our entire house wasn’t worth a single hair on Colin’s head.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Todd pouted, “he left for a basketball school anyway.”

“And you didn’t leave your bedroom for a week,” Amanda nodded. “You cried for a whole week about that dude.”

“He was my best friend!” Todd repeated.

“Yeah I’m sure that’s what Colin thought as well,” Amanda scoffed. “What, now you’re gonna tell me you didn’t start learning guitar because you had a crush on Mr Henderson?”

“Mr Henderson taught us physics,” Todd protested, “he was my role model!”

“Mr Henderson was really, really gay,” Amanda responded. “I know cause he organized book club for us and he would say things like ‘this novel is pure decadence and chic, it speaks to my Achillean soul’ like, come on.”

“All of that proves nothing,” Todd shrugged, “you pretended to have a boyfriend in 8th grade so?”

“I’ve invented a boyfriend in 8th grade,” Amanda corrected, “so that aunt Molly would leave me alone. All of your stuff was very much not public. The only reason I know all this is because I was a sneaky little shit as a kid, okay? And anyway, what about Dirk?”

“What about him?” Todd frowned.

“You gaze at him longingly like a medieval knight in service to a beautiful prince,” Amanda began, to which Todd produced a very strained, very uncomfortable laugh.

“I gaze at him… how?”

“You heard me,” she smiled cheekily, “you look at him. At his lips when he speaks, at his arms, his collarbones…”

“Now that, that is officially too much.”

“Hey, you’re the one who asked me whether I think you’re bi,” Amanda pointed out. “I’m just giving you the receipts. And like, Todd, seriously? You knew him for how long, seven days? Before you abandoned your entire life and became a government fugitive to go search for him.”

“I was just escaping my previous life,” Todd rationalized immediately, “and also trying to find you.”

“Why did you not call the police on him when he climbed into your window then huh? Checkmate,” she grinned. “You brought him to see me two days after you’ve met. You went on a quest with him like a day after that. You risked your life for him multiple times! And last time you were that spontaneous and devoted for basically a stranger was your senior year of high school when you ran away in the middle of the semester with that girl you had been dating for like a week at that point. And you definitely wanted to sleep with her.”

“I liked Alyson for her personality,” Todd disagreed, then paused. “But yes, I also wanted to sleep with her.”

“Need any more examples?”

“No I’m good,” he replied immediately, then paused for a second. “All this stuff… if it is that obvious to you, how come I’m in my thirties now and still don’t know it?”

“Just takes time to figure stuff out,” she replied, “you didn’t even know you were a man till you were like twenty, so hey. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Fair enough.”

“Dude, basically… don’t ask me whether you think you’re bi,” Amanda concluded, “ask yourself that. Pay attention. Your brain probably knows already. It just hasn’t communicated to your mind yet.”

“Thank you, witch, for psychoanalyzing me, that was very profound.”

“Talk to Farah as well,” she added. “Cause Farah is a really great friend to you, and this actually is something you might ruin after enough breakups.”

“Damn,” Todd smiled warmly, “how did my little sister get smarter and wiser than me? Cause I distinctly remember you pouring a whole plate of jello on your head cause you were pretending to be a slime monster from ghostbusters.”

“I was five,” Amanda said, smiling, “also multiple visions a month does that to you. Increases your wisdom stats.”

“Nerd.”

“Punk!”

“Likewise.”

Soon the conversation fell down a rabbit hole of memories, insults, and bizarre inside jokes, until they were no longer sure what they even started from. For a few happy hours, the things that happened to them didn’t matter, and their circumstances didn’t matter, and the fact that one of the plants in the bathroom and/or greenhouse was currently chewing on the sleeve of Amanda’s leather jacket also didn’t matter. In there, they were kids again. And the rest of it was insignificant details.

  
The cave was at peace for a brief but memorable hour. The engineers played cards with the psychic vampires, Farah and Roger bonded over instant noodles and their shared love for detective novels, and Amanda tried her best to explain her visions of a cracking universe to Dirk, which didn’t help much with understanding them but made her feel a bit better. For a little while, everything was okay. And then Grażyna got a phonecall.

“Don’t answer,” Varya recommended, but Grażyna did.

“Yes, boss?” she pronounced meekly into the phone, and in one tap of a finger doomed them all.

  
Lilly was busy being wrapped in a kilometer of wires and trying to poke a hole in a piece of isolating mat with a screwdriver when Grażyna sneaked into the engine room.

“Go away human,” Lilly called out as soon as she heard the noise.

“So the people who have been harassing us for the past few weeks, and demanding we give back everything we ever took from this ship,” she began, “do you happen to know them?”

“Sadly, I do,” Lilly mumbled, taking another stab at the isolating mat.

“So, um,” Grażyna continued, “suppose they were on their way here… would that be good or bad?”

Lilly paused. She removed the screwdriver from the mat. She put it down, removed her safety goggles, and secured all of the undone details. Then screamed, very loudly, into her hands. Just for a little while.

“Call everyone to the common room,” she said, surprisingly calmly, after the scream.

“The one with the food machine?”

“Yes, fucking hell, the one with the food machine! Quick!” she added, untangling herself from the wires. “I will never have peace.”

  
She did not wait for literally everyone to get to the common room - she didn’t have time for that. She counted Roger, Dirk, and Farah, and decided that was good enough.

“Right,” Lilly said, concentrating all her inner strength on staying as confident and collected as possible, “so I have bad news, then good news, then bad news again. I’ll start in that order cause it won’t make sense in any other order. So. Bad news is that there are two extremely incompetent but very stubborn individuals on your world that want this,” she kicked the wall of the spaceship, “piece of junk and also me, and unfortunately your friends mafia engineers have let them know they can come and get both, so they’re probably on their way already. No,” she shook her head at Roger, “I am not taking questions right now. 

“Second, I mean good, I mean the good news is that I only have six or so hours left of work on this thing and then I can either blackmail them with it or just give it to them as is. And second, I mean third, I mean the other bad news is that they’ll probably be here sooner than that. So you’ll need to buy me some time, okay? I don’t care how. Barricade this place, distract them, dress in drag and dance the hula - I don’t care. No, Roger, I am not taking questions…”

“I insist,” he said, lowering his raised arm. “In fact I will not do anything until you answer me…”

“You’re just throwing a tantrum,” Lilly said.

“No, I am demanding some information that I feel entitled to, and…”

“Roger, please,” she began - exhausted, frustrated, and so uninhibited she wasn’t even fully aware of what she was saying, “God, you haven’t changed one single bit since college. You’ve been doing this routine with teachers since forever, overloading them with questions so that they crack and tell you the answer ahead of the task, and it won’t work on me, sorry.” She smirked, for a brief second satisfied with that response.

Then she realized. Then, she looked Roger in the eyes, and he looked in hers, and he no longer needed to ask any questions because suddenly, he saw something in that look. Suddenly, the puzzle pieces in his head arranged, and everything, all of it, became stupidly, devastatingly clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if any Serbian person is reading this - apologies for the google translate dialogue bits. i'm a native Russian speaker and it seemed okay to me, but if anything's wrong, feel free to make fun of that or tell me to fix it
> 
> i am Very Close once again to finishing the first draft (literally half a chapter left) and Very Determined to get all the chapters out before the year ends. as always thank you so much for reading, liking and commenting, i read and cherish every single comment <3


	26. Chapter 26

The fantastically confusing energy of the afternoon carried on confusingly into the evening. No one had the nerve to comment on it, but it was abundantly clear that something bad was about to happen, and that most of them would determine the specifics only after the fact. Lilly remained hyperfocused and grim; she locked herself in the engine room and left them to fend off for themselves. Through a democratic process, they made the decision to jam the elevator and barricade its door as well for good measure.

“I’ve had too much barricading this week,” Dirk complained, dragging a heavy crate full of metal scrap across the sawdust-covered floor. “I’d say I’ve filled up my early quota of barricading.”

“I don’t think it will even help,” Todd agreed, and rushed in to help Dirk with the box.

Their hands met on top of it, just for the briefest of moments, and it was the strangest thing too. It was far from first time their hands ever touched, and yet it felt as if they had never done it before. They glanced fleetingly at each other; both still had the soft simmering buzz of electricity lingering on their skin. And they both decisively refused to acknowledge it. 

“It’s better than nothing,” Dirk carried on as if nothing worthy of note had happened. “Maybe we can cut the power supply to the elevator too?”

  
“Pass me the pliers, will you?” Lilly asked, extending her hand, and a few seconds later Roger was passing her the heavy metal tool. “This looks worse than I thought,” she tutted as she cracked open another panel. “Way past its warranty, poor thing.”

“You won’t tell me any more then,” Roger said quietly.

“Not now, sorry. Too emotional to multitask on.”

“But we will talk eventually, yes?” He paused for a second, lost in thought. “What I mean is, you’re not going to run away and leave me, are you?”

“Never by choice,” she replied firmly. “And I’ll put up a fight if anyone tries to force me. You know me. I bite.”

“Yes,” he chuckled. “Quite.”

“It was… lonely,” she added, answering a question he’d asked some time ago. “Like I was doing all of it from scratch. On hard mode. But I’ve found people who helped me. A community of people, very kind people. Could relate to some of them really well,” she smiled, remembering something. “Oh, and I learned a bunch of cool stuff from them too. For example, did you know there’s a word for who you are?”

“You mean I’m not the only one?” Roger raised a quizzical eyebrow, understanding immediately what she meant.

“Yeah!” she beamed, distracted from her work for a second, “yeah, it’s called ‘aroace’. Short for aromantic and asexual.”

“Aroace…” Roger repeated. “I like that. Has a nice ring to it.”

“Oh there are rings too, I’ll show you later. I’ll tell you everything, later. I promise. I just need to get these circuits running first…”

  
She finished those circuits before the rest of the cave-dwellers finished their barricading. She checked every bolt and button, locked the engine room, and left the ship feeling adequately prepared for whatever would come next. Outside of the ship, people were busy moving things around and shouting various words at each other. This was more of a game than an actual task, she gathered, but she reasoned that it wouldn’t hurt either way, so she let them have at it.

The last thing Lilly did before all hell broke loose was to crack open a can of lipton iced tea and pour into it from a flask what was most likely vodka. When Amanda gave her a strange glance, Lilly muttered something about deserving one last long island iced tea cocktail. Amanda nodded and silently returned to stacking crates.

No one could be blamed for failing to prepare properly. They tried very hard and, to be fair, did construct quite an impressive monument around, in front of, and even directly inside of the elevator shaft, so it was quite a pity it didn’t come in useful. 

The bosses arrived as expected. They tried the elevator first, of course, like any civilized being would. And similarly, like any self-respecting civilized being, they stopped waiting for the elevator three seconds after they pressed the button. Instead, they just teleported downward.

Every single cave-dweller was waiting for them when they materialized on the sawdust-ridden floor. It was an uncanny feeling; one that made them realize just how pathetic their technology must have looked like to these people, and how helpless they would be in a possible (and, indeed, likely) confrontation. Most of them had seen things stranger than the dreams of BBC creative producers after a round of magic mushrooms. And yet this was The Moment, this was the second they could feel their understanding of the world incinerated right before their very eyes. 

All felt a very powerful emotion at that moment. All, including Lilly. Her emotion was exemplified by her rolling her eyes, standing up slowly from her folding chair, the can of iced tea still in her hand, and saying:

“Oh you’ve got teleports now then.”

She ambled casually past the crowd yielding their various weapons, from actual guns to magic wands and golf clubs, and stopped in front of the two menacing figures. They were taller than her, both a deep shade of black except for the heads which were glowing bright white.

“Off with the clown suits,” Lilly urged, taking a sip of her “cocktail”.

The figures did. They removed the helmets first, then undid the suits in one motion. The suits dropped on the floor with the soft thud of heavy rubber.

You could have expected many things to be under those suits. Little green men? Insects or reptiles or bipedal dolphins of some sort? One of those creatures that was supposed to be in Star Wars but was deemed to complicated to execute even on a decent budget? Well, whatever you expected, it probably wasn’t two perfectly humanoid persons that resembled closely two middle-aged lesbians just off the shooting site of the Great British Bake Off.

But that’s exactly what the removal of the suits revealed.

“Yes, we’ve got teleports, Elid.” One of the figures replied, and the cave was filled with a horrifying static noise. “Technological process did not leave with you.”

“Please not those communicators,” Lilly said, “they don’t conceal anything and the auto-translate is abysmal. Here,” she handed them over a set of devices that looked a bit like a miniature walkman. “One goes in ear, clip to your clothes.”

The two persons obeyed, clipping the things to their identical outfits. They were wearing modern freshly purchased human clothes, but arranged in a manner few humans would come up with - though it would probably get overlooked for two British lesbians.

“Better?” one of the persons asked, and Lilly gave them thumbs up. The voice was now clear and perfectly ordinary, and executed, for some reason, in a generic RP British accent.

“Right,” Lilly beamed, “so you got here after all. Thought it would take you longer, considering the horrific state of the briefing we get about this planet. I definitely had a lot of surprises when I first got here.”

“Actually,” the second one - we’ll call her Sandi for convenience - replied, “we’ve had a leg up. We’ve met this fascinating man called Ford, and he sold us a most wonderful guide, it’s called…”

“Cut to the chase, pal,” Lilly advised, “we’re all busy people here, you especially. Wouldn’t want to waste anyone’s precious time.”

“Ah yes,” the first person - we’ll refer to her as Sue - responded, “let’s get to your very overdue contract, perhaps?”

“Did it have a due date? I haven’t noticed myself,” Lilly shrugged, “was it written in tiny letters in a parallel dimension?”

“It was five local planetary orbital transits,” Sandi explained patiently, “and do you know how long it’s been, Elid, since you were supposed to return with your report? Over fifty local planetary orbital transits. Ten times that long!”

“Sorry I’m just really bad at counting.”

“You’re in charge of sales.”

“Big hiring mistake, but not my fault. Anyway,” Lilly said, pacing casually across the cave, “here’s the deal. Thanks for coming back for me and everything but I’m not coming back. I’ll hand over my report,” she put her hand into her pocket and took out a single USB memory stick, “good luck with this storage device, it’s basically unbreakable but I’ve no idea where you can plug it into. You’ll figure it out. I’ve fixed up the ship as well, so company property is safe. And I assume you got back all of the tech that was missing from it and wiped the people along with it so it’s all good, really.”

“That is definitely a suggestion,” Sue said, “but we have a different one. Our proposal is that you take the report, get into the spaceship, and leave this planet with us to return home and stand corporate trial for your crimes against the company. Also we wipe all of these people as well,” and with that, she took a small cube out of her pocket, placed it down on the ground, and tapped it lightly with her foot. It immediately transformed itself into a small table, on top of which stood two glasses, a bottle of some blue liquid, and a clunky device about the size of a paperback book.

“Pff, crimes?” Lilly chuckled in what she hoped was a casual, nonchalant manner, but came out just a tad too strained, “what crimes?”

“Oh I don’t know,” Sandi told her, “extending your contract tenfold? Harming company property? Completely inappropriate interactions with a class 3 civilization? Revealing patented corporate technology?”

“I didn’t reveal that much…”

“You worked for the local government!”

“Only for a few years! And I only did small things.”

“You provided technological solutions that got them to their main moon,” Sue reminded.

“Oh I only helped a little bit!” retaliated Lilly. “They got most of the way there completely on their own. And a lot of them don’t believe they even did in the first place so honestly? Who cares.”

“You’re going with us,” Sandi asserted, “now.”

“I am not,” she responded, calmly, “and in fact if you keep insisting on it,” she paused to get something out of her pocket, “I will blow that ship the fuck up and then you’re really screwed. That will put you into debt for the rest of your lives.”

“Once again, we have an alternative suggestion,” Sandi told her in the same calm manner, “you and the ship are going back to Krargria or I will fry the brains of every single human in this room, on permanent setting, and tell the board it was you so that you’ll have the privilege of spending the rest of your life in corporate jail.”

Lilly breathed in sharply and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She looked over her shoulder at Roger; his eyes were wide with a mix of excitement, confusion and fear. The rest of the crowd was silent, stunned, watching the interaction unfold. Up until this moment, none of them were taking it seriously. It was a mildly amusing thing happening to someone else before that. But now it was personal; now their lives have been threatened as well, and they were ready to react.

They just needed to figure out how exactly one is supposed to react in a situation so bizarre and ridiculous it would seem too stupid even to a dreaming person. In fact a few of the cave-dwellers have been pinching themselves or trying to push fingers through their palms just to check whether or not they were awake.

“So, um,” Todd spoke up, “this is all… not very interesting, but just to check, you’re aware there’s like a whole bunch of people here, right? And we’re all… sentient, is that the word? We’re intelligent beings. Do we get a say in this?”

“Honestly, Todd,” Dirk said, taking the first cautious step away from the crowd, “I think they do know we are sentient, they just really don’t give a shit.”

“Yeah that would be an accurate assessment,” Lilly smiled her signature forced smile.

“So I just wanted to say that I have a gun,” Farah said, intending to continue the thought, but failing to come up with anything more, “yeah.”

“We have all kinds of things,” Amanda agreed, still keeping her magic wand under her jacket, “and there’s a lot of us.”

“Don’t be silly, little thing,” Sue smiled, “you are all very cute with your sticks, but you pose no threat to us. We have devices that can take out this entire room and reduce it to subatomic particles in seconds. If Elid here did his job properly, you would be trading with us for a tiny bit of this technology, but stars did not align for that to happen, I’m afraid.”

“She,” Lilly said.

“What?”

“The correct form of address for me in this particular society and language is she,” Lilly explained. “They have different pronouns for different genders. Yeah, it took me a while to figure out as well.”

“How peculiar,” Sandi nodded, one eyebrow raised in mild amusement. “Well-well, a nice linguistic quirk to learn before I turn the brains of these people to jelly,” she added, patting the device on the table affectionately, like one pats a very fat rabbit.

“Does anyone here have any idea what the hell is going on?” Dancho asked, then promptly avoided eye contact with one of the bosses who recognized his voice.

“Actually I think I do,” Dirk muttered, getting past the crowd and out into the open space between the people in the spaceship. “Actually,” he continued, now beaming from ear to ear, “I am almost certain, fairly confident, quite sure to definitely ninety if not ninety nine percent convinced that I have indeed solved this whole case.”

“Well?” Todd demanded after Dirk spent half a minute just standing there, smiling.

“Oh you want me to tell you?” Dirk asked. “Yes. Of course. Naturally. So take some sort of seat maybe, cause it may take a while. So, here goes. More than fifty years ago, a spaceship landed on planet Earth…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the remaining six chapters are written and only need one more round of editing - they will be posted in bulk on Saturday. as you have probably guessed, the chapter after this one is The Explanation of the case. at this point there is not much to be revealed, but it is putting all of the pieces together. so, if you still want to speculate on the explanation, do it now! :D will be very fun for me to read if anyone decides to share their thoughts in the comments
> 
> also, the remaining six chapters together come up to around 20K words (mostly because the last chapter is 7K long) so there will be a big chunk of content on Saturday, just saying
> 
> i can't believe i actually finished this novel, holy shit... six months of working on it every single day and i will post the last chapters in just a few days. unbelievable. DGHDA really kept me going this year huh,,,
> 
> as always thank you so much for reading, and happy holidays!


	27. Chapter 27

More than fifty years ago, a spaceship landed on planet Earth. It landed just off the East cost of South America, on a tiny island populated exclusively by crabs and occasionally birds that ate said crabs. Out of the spaceship and directly into a dead crab stepped out a person called Elid. This already (the landing on Earth part, not the stepping into a dead crab part) was a bit of an achievement since they had previously spent a whole year trying to land on Earth and not managing that trivial enough task.

Their first issue was getting caught up in a gravitational well around Jupiter, which forced them to land on one of its moons by the name of Europa. There they spent several stressful months being dragged into one party after another by the giant squids that lived under the ice in its enormous oceans. The parties had an uncanny quality to spawn other parties, due to which the entire population of the squid species was constantly engaged in at least one and often several parties of various styles. They educated each other through parties and met their mating partners at parties and typically died at parties as well, sometimes of old age, sometimes of party-related causes. 

All of this was not known to Elid, which is why they made the foolish mistake of accepting an invite. It then took them quite a while to figure out how to exit this never-ending cycle of parties. After numerous failed attempts, they finally broke free following an accidental proposal of marriage and flew straight to Earth.

They ended up on Venus. 

On Venus, they spent several more months trying to trade precious metals with the sentient bacterial clouds in the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately, Venusian bacteria did not have any precious metals and also did not understand the concept of money or technology or trade. They were, however, more than happy to discuss poetry endlessly, and it took Elid weeks to find a moment to ask to leave politely. They were a wise, experienced traveler by then, and did not allow themself to get dragged into a century-long discussion of limericks. 

In the end, they gave up and landed on what they thought was a lifeless piece of rock in the middle of the Solar System. Specifically, they landed into a whole pile of dead crabs. The crabs also did not want to trade precious metals with them, but it was unclear whether it was due to Elid’s abysmal marketing skills, or disagreement about costs, or the fact that these were crabs that were also, indeed, dead.

It then only took Elid a few days to find a habitable piece of land, meet the people who inhabited it, and begin their journey of exploring the planet.

  
Although they were, at last, in the right spot, Elid was far from keen on managing trading agreements with humans. Instead, they reasoned that it would be helpful to get to know the local society first and devise a proper marketing strategy. Or that’s what they wrote in their company report at least. In truth, they hated everything about their job, including the very concept of money, and was rather more inclined to spend a month or two getting to know as many people as possible. 

The planet confused and infuriated them at first, but they quickly discovered that it infuriated and confused the locals as well, and that helped tremendously in bonding. Elid also found plenty of people who hated their jobs, and made many friends over that shared passion. They spent their allowance generously, helped out where they could, and amused themself to great lengths by sharing sacred arcane knowledge with unsuspecting pub attendees.

Eventually they concluded that the planet was adorable and almost pleasant to live on and definitely had many fine humans inhabiting it, but ultimately it was an insignificant, useless, mostly harmless chunk of rock. Perfect for trading! They were about to get back to their ultimate mission when a chain of acquaintances and chance events lead them to the American state of Washington, to a fascinating little university full of the most amazing, curious, and bananas cuckoo bonkers people they’d ever met in their entire life.

The hope of getting back to work was abandoned. Elid had a new dream now. “What will a few more years do, in the grand scheme of things?” they asked themself, signing the admission papers into Cooltown University Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics with the name Arthur Smith. “I’ll catch up on work later,” they thought, accepting their diploma four years later. “They won’t even notice I’m gone,” they reasoned while applying, being accepted into, and working hard in graduate school.

The reports were forgotten. The spaceship was hidden safely in a specially constructed bunker somewhere in the Californian desert. And the fifty light year difference between Earth and Ursa Major meant that the company would not actually notice for quite some time. The ships could travel through hyperspace in about two weeks, sure - but the reports couldn’t. And fifty years was later, not now.

Now, Arthur was blissfully happy studying and teaching physics in a human university, not worrying about much. Nothing serious had been done after all. No bridges had been burned, blown up, or split into atoms by a specialized weapon. They were always planning, at the back of their mind, to come back home at some point. In fact, they even reminded themself about home by keeping the key to the spaceship visible and present in their house, like a tiny beacon of his past life. That was the plan for a couple of years anyway. And then they met Roger.

  
It didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t a sudden realization of “oh my god nothing in this entire stinking universe matters even a little bit except for this person”, but that’s where Arthur arrived eventually. Those were days over weeks over months of going from casual chats to night-long conversations to living together in a tiny apartment and feeling like the world was enclosed in that apartment and everything beyond it was upsetting and meaningless and fake. 

They weren’t friends and they weren’t lovers either. They were two individuals existing on just the right frequency to understand and accept each other completely and utterly. And it wasn’t sudden, but they both realized quickly that life apart was no longer possible. That they had stumbled into something way more precious than any metal and their only goal from that moment onward was to keep it going, no matter what.

One day Arthur was sitting at their desk, staring at the key to their spaceship, and it made them feel like they had cockroaches scrambling in their brain. Their mind buzzed with anxiety, persuaded that the key was about to jump out on them and maul them to death, or worse - forcefully take them back home, away from Earth and away from Roger. 

The feeling was unbearable and something had to be done about it. So they made one last trip to the spaceship to pick up some items, then sealed the whole thing for good and left, hoping to never ever return. Arthur made a music box from some metal scrap and put the key inside. Now instead of a key they had a music box that played one of Roger’s favorite tunes, and they could look at it again.

From that point on, their only real name was Arthur Smith, and they tried their best to conceal their identity and integrate themself into human society. It didn’t always work, considering that their passion for fixing things quickly spread out beyond the institute and made him very famous in specialized circles. So famous in fact, that one day they found CIA agents knocking on their door.

That whole bit was annoying, but Arthur didn’t think much of it. The agents never imprisoned them or ever made them a formal job proposition. The CIA just made house calls every now and then, and left them alone after they would fix whatever pointless junk needed fixing. And that wasn’t worth the fuss of explaining their origins and risking their identity just to make the humans go away. The department fell apart soon anyway, and the agents never called them again.

Arthur lived a long, happy life, studying and teaching physics in university and being Roger’s person. They felt so at home that they began to forget where they were from, and who they really were, and what their body would inevitably go through, whether they wanted it or not. When they remembered at last what was about to happen, it was already too late to do anything about it or even prepare for it properly.

*

The people of the Ursa Major Collective are a peculiar species. They don’t give their children names and instead wait for them to pick one instead, which sometimes results in wonderfully hilarious choices. Their lifespan ranges in the four to five hundred, but they celebrate their birthdays only every 15 years or so to save up on the traditional river eels and confetti. And the majority of them overwhelmingly prefers washing the dishes to cooking, which is why the dishwasher was invented only after the hyperdrive engine.

A thing about them that is not at all peculiar and in fact quite widespread across the galaxy is their genders. All children of their species are born to a form that most humans would call male. In that state, they spend about a hundred and fifty years, after which comes the moment of Change. The outcome of the Change depends on their genes, their environment, and the societal influences of their upbringing. Through the Change, these individuals are transformed into either the next stage of male, a gender that most humans would designate as female, or a gender that many humans with no education on the topic would designate as snowflake made-up bullshit.

Of course on the planets of the Ursa Major Collective, the Change is a natural part of life - fully studied, expected, and celebrated. No one is surprised when a hundred-something adolescent disappears for a few weeks, then returns in a drastically younger, different body. Humans, on the other hand, are less accustomed to such transformations. Not all can even comprehend a change of gender! A change in apparent age and physique is completely beyond them.

Or so judged Arthur when they woke up one day, hungry as a hibernating bear that overslept well into summer, and realized that they were totally and definitively fucked.

Nothing was to be done. They had some impressive technology on their hands, but they doubted that some fancy screwdrivers could overturn their biology. Could they explain this away to humans? They doubted it. In fact, Athrur even doubted that Roger, with his limitless curiosity and vivid imagination, would believe them. It would also mean telling him the truth, and explaining that they made up their entire identity, invented a whole backstory for themself, even going so far as to paying some random woman in Louisiana to pretend to be their sister. Would Roger ever forgive them for lying to him for forty or so years?

No, Arthur made up their mind. They had their chance and they blew it, and nothing was to be done now except to pack their things and go away for a few weeks, and see where the process would take them. So they said their goodbyes and gave away their key - not as an anchor anymore, but as a punishment for themself. They messed it up. They made too many mistakes. Now they would have to see their person, their closest living soul in the entire universe, live out his remaining years and slowly age to death… alone.

He didn’t even take him to the train station. Fair enough, since Arthur wasn’t driving anywhere either. They just took two suitcases - one filled with simple clothes and one filled to the brim with snacks - to a local hotel room, where they stayed for the next few weeks. First, they spent half a month eating twice their daily need of calories, which was easy enough thanks to the astonishing variety of junk food that America provided. One night when they were watching reality TV and eating a whole pack of mac’n’cheese all by themself, Arthur realized: this body or a different one, they could never leave this place. Not ever. It felt, annoyingly, way too much like home.

They fell asleep on a bed filled with candy bar wrappers one day and did not wake up for another week or so. When they did wake up, with a raging hangover and the taste of week-old chocolate in their mouth, from the mirror at her looked a blond teenage girl, hardly older than 15 in human years.

*

Things did not go easy from that point on; in fact they went about as easy as riding a bicycle blindfolded, drunk, and with a duck giving you instructions for where to drive. In other words, it was definitely an interesting experience, but nothing about it was even remotely easy.

Although she had the common sense to withdraw her retirement money beforehand, she had basically lost everything else she had ever owned. Coming back to Roger’s was out of the question. All of her previous social, professional, and legal connections were gone. She was in need of new documents, a place to stay, and a whole new life to live. And she quickly realized that building a life as a young girl in 21st century America was not as wonderfully straightforward as it was the previous time, as an educated white man in the sixties.

For one, the retirement money was not enough to buy her even two semesters at the same university she spent decades in teaching. In fact that money would soon run out even if she only used it for rent and food. She spent a couple years trying to get the hang of her new circumstances and discovered that everything was difficult and infuriating and ridiculous. She almost wanted to come back home… but she also missed her person, bitterly, every single morning and every single night.

And so, despite every ounce of common sense she still had left, she returned to the university - this time as Lilly, with no prospects or education, just to work as a cleaner.

*

Meanwhile, more or less in the same time frame, four young engineers from the nerd enclosures at Silicon Valley set out on a drunk adventure to the depths of the Californian desert. It is important to note here that only three of them were drunk and the fourth was driving, completely sober and content with her drunk friends providing unlimited amusement. It is also important to note that all four hated their jobs for one reason or another. This felt very ungrateful to them - all either children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, blessed with opportunity and talent for coding - but no matter how hard they tried, they could not make themselves love what they did.

So they often ran away to various places, sometimes drunk, always trying to pretend that their daily lives were but a prolonged round of grinding in a badly designed video game, and these were their real missions.

On this particular mission, their completely sober driver Varya drove off the road in a laughing fit and crashed into what was supposed to be a sand hill but was indeed the shaft of an elevator. None of them got hurt. All of them thought it obvious to dedicate the next few weeks of their lives to studying this fascinating phenomenon, and eventually built up the courage to go down in the elevator. And they were right to do so, since inside they discovered something beyond their wildest sci-fi infused fantasies - a whole functioning alien spaceship.

And of course they opted for taking it apart and selling it bit by bit in order to quit their jobs.

They did not sell the important bits, of course! Only some of the less useful stuff. All of the things they deemed interesting and important were taken apart, analyzed, and put back together to the best of their ability. The underground hideout became Their Place. This is where they came to invent things and have fun with their inventions and feel like they were kids again, exploring a world full of wonder and mystery and also a lot of sawdust and spiders. And if they had to sell some piece here and there, sure, why not!

One of such pieces was a battery that seemed to hold an almost infinite amount of charge. It was sold to a shady guy called Jo, who then sold it to another person, and through a long chain of buyers - along with a beautiful ornate ring - ended up in front of one bored billionaire, Kevin McDougall. He bought both of them; the ring for his girlfriend, the battery for the pacemaker in his heart. 

These purchases did not bring him any luck. He broke up with his girlfriend first; the battery out of his very beating heart was ripped out shortly afterward.

*

The next in our long act of convoluted events and semi-competent people who hated their jobs were two sales managers from the Ursa Major Collective that we can call Sue and Sandi. Their real names are too cumbersome for humans to pronounce and also profoundly offensive in at least seven human languages. 

They had the misfortune to come last in their tri-annual sales report and were sent to Earth on a mission as a punishment, which, knowing everything about Earth, kind of made sense. Operating on a tight schedule, they jumped right into action on the same day they landed. Unfortunately, they managed to land on the South Pole and wasted two days negotiating with a group of penguins. By the time they had checked their files about what humans looked like, they had three weeks left to fulfill their task.

To make matters worse, they also quickly discovered that the scale of the problem was far wider than they had anticipated. Rogue investigators were rather common, but rogue investigators that had managed to get involved with local governments and had their tech stolen and sold all over the world? Less so. 

Suddenly the situation needed outsourcing, so they employed the services of several mercenaries. Knowing very little about how humanity operated, they found those mercenaries through linkedin and craigslist. Surprisingly, most of them were quite good at tracking down bits and pieces of alien tech and taking them back through buying, stealing, or murdering its owners. Really, Orson was the only one to fail.

So they took care of Orson.

The billionaire was a bit of a tricky person to deal with. The ring given to McDougall’s girlfriend was stolen by one of their temporary employees, but trying to figure out where he kept the battery was a tad more complicated. They got it out in the end, using a subatomic matter-splitter. It left him with no scars and a brain thoroughly scrambled by the company patented memory wiping device. It didn’t really wipe the memory, but it did freeze consciousness either temporarily or permanently, and that was good enough since you can hardly access any memories without a functioning consciousness.

Despite doing their best to keep a low profile, the two sales managers were seen all over the place by multiple, multiple people. After all, they weren’t exactly subtle, with their terrible translation devices and energy-shielding suits that made them look like a character straight out of a creepypasta. 

Their other tech didn’t exactly help with hiding either. For one, it required a tremendous amount of electricity, the draining of which from local power lines caused electricity shortages all over the place and even messed with weather on some occasions. And the waves that their teleporting device generated were powerful enough to affect everything from air to roads to walls, creating horrifying noises and scaring half the block of buildings on some occasions.

Gratuitous use of brain scrambling devices neutralized maybe 10% of those sightings. The rest most definitely ended up as gossip, youtube videos, and creepypastas.

  
The more days passed, the more things spiraled out of control. The rogue engineers that were excellent at selling off alien tech proved useless at tracking it down, and the actual rogue investigator was nowhere to be found. With the rising stress levels fell the bosses’ dedication to keeping a low profile. As they entered the last week they could realistically spend on Earth, they had a two-person business meeting and decided that after they were cheated, tricked, laughed at and even shot at one time, it would be fair to retaliate. 

All bets were off. All safety protocols were forgotten. They would get it done in time, no matter the cost - and screw the trading agreement with humans.

None of this would have happened if Elid/Arthur/Lilly had the option of sending her resignation letter instead of a report.

(Also, if some random truck driver did not spot a group of people disappearing into a sand hill in the middle of the Californian desert and made a facebook post about it, tipping off both Black Wing operatives and the Ursa Major Collective managers, it would probably slow things down a bit. But that was beyond Dirk’s knowledge and therefore beside the point…)

*

“And that’s more or less the story,” Dirk said, and folded over, breathless. “Sorry,” he muttered, “these are, oof, these are shorter, usually. Need to, uh, need to practice for these some time. Was I right, plus minus?” he asked, looking at Lilly, the Slavic mafia engineers, and the bosses in turn.

The bosses stayed quiet. The rogue engineers just gave him a silent nod and a few shrugs.

“How the hell do you know all this?” demanded Lilly, twirling a blond hair strand on one finger in an uncharacteristic display of nervousness.

“Just guessing really,” Dirk brushed it off with a hand wave, “now, the real question here is…” and he turned slowly on the spot, making sure to look at everyone at least once, “what are we all going to do about it?..”


	28. Chapter 28

A peculiar atmosphere filled the cave as the question dropped. It was unclear whether this was the result of the tangible tension and excitement in the room, or some freak effect of the bosses’ tech on air molecules, or both. What it accomplished was to make the tip of everyone’s tongue buzz with static electricity, as if a battery had been applied to it, and create a subtle taste of copper in everyone’s mouth. They all took a few seconds to process it; then, Todd exited the crowd and spoke up.

“So I have a few questions,” he said, getting his phone out of his pocket. “I took notes,” he explained, scrolling through the text file. “Question one: if you’re aliens, how come you look human?”

“Stupid questions,” Lilly replied immediately, “half the sentient universe looks like this, it’s just convergent evolution. Same reason everything keeps turning into crabs on this planet. Next!”

Todd had further questions after that question, but decided to get back to his list.

“Second then: why was Kevin freaking out randomly for no reason, apparently because he was being watched?”

“Probably the battery in his pacemaker,” Lilly continued, “and whichever device they were using to track and remove it. Tends to mess with whatever piece of tech its tracking, sometimes other things as well. Might have been killing the wi-fi in a mile radius. Oopsie-doodle dude.”

“And how did those two track everything?”

“Complicated,” Sandi told him, “and not for your human ears. I can tell you one thing, for your entire species – stop posting everything on Facebook.”

“That is good general advice,” Dirk nodded thoughtfully.

“Why did the linkedin mercenary dude end up in the same hospital as Kevin?” Todd was not done yet with the questions.

“A coincidence, probably,” Dirk said, “those do happen. They both had the same medical issue, in the same location, more or less. Makes sense they ended up in the same hospital as well.”

“How did you get involved in this?” Todd swirled on the spot and pointed at Amanda.

“I was just following my visions,” she responded. “Got in trouble with this lot,” she added, pointing in turn at the IT mafia. “Thanks, Beast.”

“You’re welcome,” Beats signed back.

“And there’s Black Wing involved?” Todd said.

“I don’t know about any wings,” Lilly replied, “but I did have CIA contacting me, yeah. For a little while anyway. They just stopped calling one day.”

“Hopefully that is the entire extent of their involvement,” Dirk said, “I do not want them to show up unexpectedly like ‘aha, you thought we were gone, well sike!’. They probably wouldn’t phrase it like that though,” he elaborated. 

“They’ve been kind of quiet since Wendimoor,” Todd nodded, “maybe they were disbanded again.”

“I’ve met a dude from there in my vision,” Amanda said, but was promptly ignored.

“List!” Todd remembered, scrolling on his phone. “Right. You,” he turned towards Lilly again, “what the hell were you doing on this planet in the first place?!”

“It’s like he said,” she shrugged, “trying to trade precious metals.”

“Like gold and silver you mean?”

“No, dumbass, precious metals,” she scoffed, “like copper and zinc and aluminum. You have buttloads of those, and you don’t even value them much! Use them in things like fences and keys and cutlery. It was going to be the deal of the century,” Lilly pondered, “I was going to buy all this stuff from you… a million meters of copper wire. One billion rolls of aluminum foil. One septendecillion brass doorknobs. Precious metals for all.”

“One septendecillion?” Varya asked. “There is not enough atoms in universe for so much brass.”

“Well that’s what I wrote in my report,” Lilly shrugged. “They’re managers. They can’t count for shit.”

“All these statements are being recorded and will very much be used against you in corporate court,” Sue reminded.

“Yeah well you can suck my entire dick,” Lilly scowled. “Cause you know how many brass doorknobs I bought from these people? Zero. I bought absolutely nothing from them cause I hate this job and refuse to do it.”

“This makes zero sense to me,” Farah spoke up, slowly stepping out of the crowd. “You come from an amazingly technologically advanced planet,” she said, looking at Lilly, “and you are possibly the best engineer in the world with knowledge of advanced quantum radiophysics, or whatever you were researching in that institute. And you come to Earth? To live in… Seattle?”

“Well they didn’t need engineers or physicist on Ursa Major Epsilon,” Lilly said, “they only needed market investigators in a company. And yeah this planet is pretty infuriating at times but so is mine. At least people here are decent and let me do physics in peace.”

“And you never noticed that your most dearest friend person was an alien?” Farah asked, this time at Roger.

“How was I supposed to know?” he responded. “We met in a research institute! He, I mean, she, I mean…”

“Either she or they,” Lilly interjected, “whichever is easier.”

“Yes, indeed,” Roger continued, “Arthur and I met in a research institute and they weren’t even the strangest person there! Now that I think about it, might be quite a handful of aliens working in my department. George especially. And possibly Rachael.”

“Or they are just very not neurotypical,” Lilly pointed out, “that’s why I loved being in a university – very easy to blend in!”

“And you still didn’t tell him the truth,” Todd interrupted, “and let him think you were dead. For five years. I’ve told some horrible lies in the past,” Todd added, glancing at Amanda, “but something like that, to someone like that…” and despite his best intention to look at Farah, ended up looking at Dirk. “I could never…”

“Well what was I supposed to do!” Lilly responded, her voice cracking all of a sudden. “I knew they’d come to drag me away sooner or later anyway. And that I would outlive him. In the end.” She met gazes with Roger, her eyes filling up with tears against her best effort. “Imagine living with that thought for fifty years.”

“I forgive you,” Roger said unexpectedly. “I am very angry with you, still, but I do forgive you. I believe you had good intentions. Just a very bad execution. As usual,” he said, and a smile crept up on his face. “So I am moderately angry with you. More angry than when you flooded the institute and ruined the second draft of my master’s thesis. But less angry than when you put my hat into a particle accelerator.”

“Oh you told me that story,” Dirk beamed. “Pity about that hat.”

“It was a very ugly hat!” Lilly disagreed. “It deserved to die a horrible death.”

“Arthur,” Roger said, smiling, “is it okay to call you that, still?”

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t really care,” she replied.

“Arthur…” Roger repeated. “I missed you so much!”

A few movements, a few moments passed, and soon they were embracing each other, and many more people in the cave felt tears swelling up in their eyes beyond all reason. 

“I’m so sorry,” Lilly muttered into Roger’s shoulder, “I was such an idiot… ugh I’m going to fix everything that got broken in your apartment!”

“There’s quite a lot,” he smiled, letting her go at last, “all courtesy of those bosses of yours.”

“While this is all undeniably touching, I’m sure,” interjected Sue, “I feel like we are straying from the very urgent topic of Elid committing crimes against capitalism.”

“You say that as if that’s a bad thing,” Lilly smirked, “and yet you’re here, and not by choice, I’m guessing. So how’s that capitalism working out for you huh?”

“I will not tolerate such insubordination!” Sue exclaimed, hand darting to the device on the table in front of her.

“Oh stop it will you?” Dirk tutted, raising his hands in the air momentarily for a show of good will. “There’s absolutely no need for violence here. In fact, I think I have a solution that will satisfy all parties involved.”

“We’re all ears,” Sandi responded, blatantly unconvinced.

“Well,” Dirk began, pacing the room slowly, “could you please elaborate one thing for me, about the whole changing process? If that’s appropriate of course,” he added, glancing at Lilly. She gave him a quick nod. “Yes. Right. Well. When you go through the process, how do you record and acknowledge it, bureaucratically speaking?”

“It’s all quite well organized,” Sue replied, “there are protocols. When the time of the Change approaches, the individual goes to a special center for observation, to make sure everything goes right, like meeting their caloric needs…”

“How you survived the process in this barbaric place I have no idea,” Sandi pointed out.

“’twas quite alright,” Lilly shrugged, “calories and everything. They have this amazing thing called cheese wiz…”

“…and their hormone levels are adjusted,” Sue continued as if there was no interruption, “also it is tracked carefully to affirm identity. Genetic code is altered during the Change so it wouldn’t be possible to issue new documents otherwise. All kinds of situations happened before the monitoring was introduced.”

“Oh yes, chaotic fun times,” Lilly chuckled, “all in the history books. Unlimited opportunity to mess with people! I kind of wish I was born back in our ancient history. Must have been a very exciting life for them.”

“Well there’s your solution!” Dirk announced, smiling ear to ear. “There has been no documentation of Lilly’s change so frankly she could be anyone.”

“Whatever you are suggesting,” she said, “I’m on board so far.”

“It’s perfectly straight-forward,” Dirk continued, “these two wonderful, uh, individuals,” he pointed broadly at Sue and Sandi, “can just claim you are dead! Come up with any story, doesn’t matter, really. Say you crashed upon landing and died instantly, and that’s why the ship is like that.”

“Lie to the company?” Sue asked. “That’s preposterous!”

“And what’s in it for us?” Sandi added.

“Anything you want,” Dirk said. “You can take Lilly’s report. Use it for your own work. You can be the people to establish trade with Earth and take all the credit for it! More than that,” he turned around to look at the rogue engineers, “you have a bunch of people here who have been trading your tech for the last five years, and tinkering with it as well. At a wild guess, I think they’d be willing to work with you, in exchange for better work conditions.”

“If by better work conditions you mean not yelling at us and treating us like people,” Grażyna said, “and allowing us to keep tinkering, then yeah, sure.”

“We know the market,” Dancho agreed, “we know Silicon Valley, we have the entire routine down to a t.”

“If we can just do tech things,” Varya nodded, “and be your consultants and inventors, that would be cool deal!”

“We want medical insurance,” Milena concluded.

“There you go,” Dirk said, “I’ve got it all figured out for you. No need to thank me.”

“Two conditions on this,” Lilly interjected, “you leave me and Roger alone and never talk to us ever again. Also, you give me a good death story. Don’t have any family left on Epsilon but I do have some mates and co-workers there and I want them to remember me well.”

“That is a lot of conditions for a fugitive,” Sue scoffed, “what makes you think we will go against the company and assist you in your delinquent behavior?”

“Oh drop it,” Lilly shook her head, “you hate the company worse than me! See I just don’t care about it, but you do. You want to be good at all that bullshit. So of course you’ll go with that suspiciously psychic human’s plan. You’d do anything to get back on that employee of the month board.”

“I’m not psychic,” Dirk muttered, but was ignored.

“Well,” Sue said, “we’ll have to discuss it. In private.”

And with that, they disabled their translating devices and walked together to the far end of the cave.

“This is going amazing,” Todd beamed, running up to Dirk, also excited beyond reason, “I’ve never seen anything like this! You didn’t just solve the case, you like, solved everything!”

“What about Kevin?” Farah asked Lilly. “What about all those people who had their brains scrambled?”

“It’s reversible,” Lilly assured everyone, “quite easily so. I mean, it will probably take them some time to get back to full health, but the scrambling itself can be undone with one button push. They don’t give out tech like that to be used on potential business-suitable populous without some fail-switches.”

“So,” Dirk said, “about 99% of this had been dealt with then. Let’s just hope nothing suddenly happens to ruin this all.”

And that phrase had been Dirk’s one mistake. Quite a novice mistake, too – never say such things until everything is said, done, and settled. Mostly cause it just looks terribly silly when something does suddenly happen, which is exactly what occurred next.

  
Just as the bosses were about to walk back towards the crowd and announce that they were open to negotiating the human deal, a sound appeared in the cave. It appeared in a moment of anticipation-heavy silence and was therefore amplified and heard by almost everyone in the room.

It was the sound of a descending elevator, working perfectly despite every applied intervention.

No one dared to move or say a word as the elevator went down and down. They were all still keeping quiet as it descended completely with a subtle bing, and the doors slid slowly open, and out of it – disheveled, exhausted by an extraordinary long drive, climbing over the barricade and brandishing a loaded gun – stepped Black Wing Supervisor Ken Adams.

“Stay still, all of you!” he yelled, emerging at last out of the barricade and walking towards the crowd, which was a completely redundant gesture considering they did not have any intention to move, “I’m here for Prometheus, and I am not leaving without him!”

And with that, he pointed the gun confidently at professor Roger Daly.


	29. Chapter 29

The full uncensored reports detailing what exactly had happened on the day Black Wing ceased to exist (again…) were definitely interesting.

They were hardly coherent, not believable in the slightest, and varied wildly in their contents – but they sure were interesting.

Many high standing CIA officials later tried to extract some sort of a lesson from the whole incident, but were not successful in this task. They had analyzed hundreds of pages worth of records, email exchanges, and reports about how the facility was being run; they talked to many employees of the facility and even one or two ex subjects; and, as the last resort, they viewed hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, most of which was very, very boring. 

All in the hopes of finding some sort of mistake that had occurred during the whole operation. Something to point at and say, there, this is where the last guy made a terrible error, and this is how we fix it on the next attempt.

They didn’t find any. 

As far as every analytical expert was concerned, there was not a single mistake that supervisor Ken Adams had committed during his almost year long run of managing Black Wing…

…and it still burned down to the ground.

This is when CIA concluded that, maybe, just maybe, they were operating from the wrong premise this entire time. Perhaps the subjects of Black Wing truly could not be contained to a single facility, or in fact be used in any meaningful way. One of the execs even said that the whole idea was akin to herding cats and that this much should have been obvious to anyone who had ever looked through the project files. And many retroactively agreed that yes, indeed, the whole idea was ludicrous, and how could they ever agree to that, and hey let’s shift our attention back to torturing, imprisoning, and murdering normal people.

Normal, ordinary people that could not switch minds with strangers in their sleep or extract actual concrete facts from tarot spreads or kill people just by dodging bullets.

And everyone moved on happily, and no one tried to dig deeper into what actually happened that night.

  
The funny thing is that, form the inside of the event, it was not immediately clear what had happened either. They were planning it for months beforehand and many even felt like they had a solid plan, but no one could describe this plan in any detail. There was just a generalized feeling of having a plan, and that seemed to be good enough.

Most agreed that it started with Supervisor Adams leaving on his own one-man mission, and with the sound of a few dozen people hitting the pipes in their bathrooms and chanting quietly under their breaths. It went on for a while; it also woke up many of the soldiers guarding the facility, as well as a family of spiders that lived in the basement were the pipes ran. The spiders took that as a cue to evacuate the building, and were spot on, because soon, the banging ceased, and the doors began to fall down all across the Black Wing Facility Gamma.

It was not a mistake to keep all the prisoners in the same building, but it certainly didn’t help.

The general consensus was that the initial steps were accomplished thanks to Laurie, the girl that could apply powerful hypnosis through kisses. To use this skill, she had to first orchestrate a fake affair with one of the high ranking guards. This part worked so well that they actually ended up falling in love with each other for real, after which the hypnosis part became rather redundant. A month into knowing her, and he was prepared to do anything - so on the night when it happened, he turned off all the cameras, disabled all alarms, and pushed the button that unlocked every single door in the facility.

A lot of other things happened in a quick succession soon afterward. There was a big chunk of joyful chaos, during which many valuable items were destroyed in many violent and creative ways. Computers were smashed and records were burned and someone meticulously opened every single can in the storage room behind the cafeteria as a touching moment of revenge to the horrible Black Wing meals.

Eventually, the exuberant, unstoppable crowd had managed to knock out every single soldier in the facility and spilled over in the yard outside. This was a delightful moment; many of them were not allowed outside at all, and this had been the first time in months when they stepped on grass and breathed in fresh air and looked up to see the sky instead of a blank white ceiling. The feeling was mutual, and it was extraordinary. They’ve dreamed about it for such a long time, thinking that, surely, this is one of those dreams of running away for a better life that everyone has and no one ever experiences.

And they did it. They were running away. Perhaps not to travel the world or live on a lovely farm in Iowa, but hell, anything had to be better than whatever crap they had to suffer through up to this point.

“Is everyone out?” Bart asked, meandering around the yard, counting people according to her own bizarre system. “Michael? Robin? Julie?”

“We’re pretty sure it’s everyone,” said David, the love-struck ex-guard. “Prisoners and soldiers and all.”

“Did someone take out the rats?” Bart asked. “The actual rats, from the labs?”

“Everyone,” David assured, “all humans, all animals. We’ve double checked.”

“Okay then,” Bart smirked, “you can blow it then.”

“Wooo!” cheered Corey the tarot diviner by her side. “Blow. It. Up. Blow. It. Up!”

Soon the whole crowd had joined in on the cheer, and Bart gave her nod of approval to one of the men. An elaborate setup had been constructed and connected to the oxygen tanks in one of the labs. And with one swift motion, fire was introduced into the system, and, to everyone’s collective delight, the building did, indeed, blow the hell up.

They watched it burn like a gigantic bonfire, and didn’t care much about the soot landing on their clothes and skin. The soldiers stood aside, paralyzed, unable to intervene in any meaningful manner. Many were just terrified to shreds of the escaped projects; some actually admired them, and were up for joining the party.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Bart announced eventually. “Does everyone have a safe place to go to? Raise your hand if you don’t, you’re going with me.”

“I have a safe place to go,” Corey spoke up, “but I’ll go with you.”

“Okay,” Bart smiled. She did not expect this, but it made her cheeks tingle with joy. “Do you want to like… be not-prisoner friends?”

“Yes!” she beamed, “I would love to be not-prisoner friends with you, Bart.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled awkwardly, “now get everyone and go hide somewhere, in a place I can find you all in.”

“What about you?” 

“Oh, I’ll stay for a bit,” she said, “I have one more thing left to do.”

And with that, she sent the people away, and took out of the pocket of her newly acquired coat her newly acquired gun, and loaded it up.

*

“Holy shit, this is amazing!” Friedkin yelled at another Friedkin, hands pointing wildly at the screen of the Universe TV. “They, like, totally blew it up! It all burned down like, all of it.”

“That is so cool,” the other Friedkin agreed, “I didn’t realize how much I hated that place.”

“Yeah right? It made me feel so bad,” Friedkin nodded, “and now it’s on fire. I can’t believe they actually blew it up!”

“Hey, so what about that cave and everything?” a third Friedkin spoke up. “Should we check up on them as well or what?”

“Eh I guess,” original Friedkin shrugged, and began to flip through the channels. “Might take a while. A lot of stuff in here.”

But a while passed, and then another while, and many whiles later he was still not able to locate the right channel.

“Huh. Weird,” he mumbled under his breath. “Must be in, like, really bad temporal flux. Fluxing all over the place.”

“Check the bookshelf,” one of the other Friedkins advised.

“I know,” he retorted, breaking his play-pretend for a second. “Of course I know, you’re literally me.”

He ambled across the living room to the enormous bookcase propping up one of the walls, in front of which he stopped, put his hands on his sides, and produced a single sigh.

“That’s a lot of books,” he pointed out to no-one in particular, and a bunch of nearby Friedkins nodded in agreement. “Okay. Alright. Here’s what I’ll do…”

And without an explanation, he closed his eyes, stuck a hand out, wiggled it in the air for a bit, then grabbed on violently to the book that was closest to his fingers. He pulled it out of the shelf, eyes still closed, and gave it a few testing pokes and prods. It felt like a regular book in his hands - medium sized, not particularly thick, with a thin, glossy cover. He opened his left eye just a little bit to squint at it. Reassuringly, the book was still there in his hands. 

To test the waters further, he opened his right eye this time while holding the book quite far apart from his face. Now he could actually see the cover, which depicted a door that opened to a bright starry sky. The title read: “One Septendecillion Brass Doorknobs”.

“That’s a rubbish title,” Friedkin told to the group of himselves that had gathered around him, “what does that supposed to mean, even?”

He opened his other eye and inspected the book closely, all the while mindful of the fact that it could fall apart into imaginary atoms at any second. It didn’t seem remarkable in any way from the outside and nothing further could be gleamed through this manner of examination. He had to actually see the insides of it next.

“Here goes…” he muttered under his breath and flipped open the first few pages.

The pages were quite normal too - white paper, black ink, a lot of words on the page forming sentences, many of them quite lengthy. He flipped through the pages, skimming the words. They described all the things that he had already seen on his Universe TV, from the day professor Daly had discovered that his music box was missing and up to the point when Ken had stepped out of the elevator. And after that…

“Oh this is weird,” Friedkin exclaimed, “look!” he added, showing the book to his other projected selves.

Starting from that point, the ink was faint and gray, barely visible and fading in and out of existence.

“Like I’ve said,” Friedkin nodded to himself, “fluxing all over the place. This is, like, this is what is more likely to happen at this point, or something like that. Right?”

“I don’t know,” one of the other Friedkins replied, “we’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah it must be like when the Universe TV gives a forecast,” original Friedkin replied. “The most probable outcome. Alright, well… it’s spoilers though! Should I even read it?”

“Jesus fuck just read it already!” a particularly impatient Friedkin urged.

“Yes, okay, fine!” the original shouted back. “I’ll read it.”

He did not like any part of what he read next.

*

‘ _…the sound sequence carried on - bang, a fired shot, clang, the empty bullet husk dropping to the floor, a thud. A minuscule pause filled with gasps and then silence. Someone screamed; it was hard to tell who it was, and the fight carried on. Somewhere in the crowd, Lilly dropped to her knees and crawled across the blood-stained dirt and sawdust towards her goal._

_“Roger?” she whispered, taking the man by the shoulder and shaking him gently. “Roger, can you hear me?”_

_But he did not answer. She knew he would not answer. She closed her eyes, lay down next to him, put her head on his blood-soaked chest and sobbed…_ ’

“What the hell?” Friedkin stared at the page, eyes wide in shock and horror. “This is rubbish! How could they screw this up so badly?”

“Flip forward!” Another Friedkin demanded. “Now!”

“Fine!”

It did not get any better.

*

‘ _…explosion still roared across the cave, shattering glass and the occasional ear drum. Thousands of metallic pieces were scattered across the floor, the spaceship gutted, engulfed in flames and producing puffs of toxic fume and smoke. She tried to shield them with her body, but she knew it would not help. Amanda’s last thought was “I let them down” - just before she closed her eyes and didn’t think anything more. Beside her…_ ’

“I am so not okay with this,” Friedkin shouted at the book, shaking it in the air, “I am so very not okay with this!”

He wanted to stop; put the book down and kick it with his foot until it disappeared. But his curiosity took over, and he flipped one more page, eyes darting frantically across it. 

He quickly regretted doing so.

*

‘ _…fingers covered in Dirk’s blood, cheeks running with tears, he turned towards her and looked up._

_“Fix him,” Todd said. “You’re the miracle. You’re Prometheus. You can fix everything, so. Fix him.”_

_“I’m not that kind of fixer,” Lilly replied, shaking her head. “I am sorry. I couldn’t save my Roger either.”_

_“No,” Todd refused, “no, it can’t be like this. You can fix him. You can fix all of them! You have all this, this technology, these things… of course you can fix them!” he shouted._

_“I can’t!” she shouted back, and dropped to her knees, exhausted, cheeks stained with soot and tears._

_“But it can’t be like this…” Todd carried on, lowering himself to the ground and clutching to Dirk’s breathless body. “He can’t be like this. This can’t be like this. I love him and I didn’t do anything and it can’t be like this…” he…_ ’

“Enough!” Friedkin yelled, snapping the book shut and yeeting it across the room as hard as he physically could.

It hit the opposite wall and shattered into a billion pieces before disappearing entirely.

“Not-real probabilistic Todd is right - it can’t be like this! We have, oh God,” he began to pace the room anxiously, “we have to prevent this somehow!”

*

An emergency Friedkin meeting was gathered at once in the living room. The real, original Friedkin took the central place (standing on the sofa) and tweaked the number of projection Friedkins until he had exactly the right amount for a productive discussion. Then, he announced their task:

“We need to figure out how to get back to the physical world,” he explained, “at least for a few minutes.”

The other Friedkins nodded solemnly, took a few moments to think it through… and the air filled with a chorus of the most bizarre, mind-boggling ideas Friedkin’s brain had ever had the capacity to produce. 

Brainstorming with only yourself for company is quite tricky; without peer review, it is near impossible to tell whether the point you are trying to get across is brilliant or utterly nonsensical, which is one of the main reasons why seemingly intelligent people routinely produce tweets that make you regret having a brain capable of processing any human language. It is also very hard to make yourself shut up. This is why, only a few minutes into the exercise, Friedkin was already prepared to throw hands with multiple versions of himself.

“Stop!” he yelled suddenly at some point, making a few Friedkins shudder. “I heard… there was a thought. A good thought. Who said it?”

Every projection began to turn their heads in every direction, trying to determine which one of them he was talking about.

“You,” the original pointed, and the projection stared back at him in a mix of shock and delight, “what did you say like fourteen seconds ago?”

“That PB&J sandwiches should have peanut butter on both sides of the bread?”

“No, before that.”

“That it would be cool if there were like tiny knitted sweaters for bees and you could buy little sweaters for them if you liked the honey that the bees made?”

“Before that.”

“That having eyebrows is overrated?”

“No, ugh…” he shook his head, frowning, “what the hell does any of this have to do with escaping into the real world?”

“I don’t know,” projection Friedkin shrugged, “everyone was just sort of shouting things so I was shouting things too.”

“Wow I am so sorry for every single person who has ever worked with me,” Friekdin muttered, rubbing the back of his head, “well anyway, what did you say before all that? The thing about the garden?”

“Ah that!” the projection beamed, “yeah right, I said maybe we can go through the well.”

“Shit,” originally Friedkin exclaimed, “of course, the well! How did I not think of that?”

“You literally did,” the projection pointed out, but was ignored by the main Friedkin who had just rushed out of the imaginary living room through the kitchen out of the back door and into the garden.

  
The garden was one of his favourite parts of the imaginary veil-scape. It was bursting with vibrant colours and delightful smells, butterflies and bees flying from one flower to another. All 100% fake of course, and personally designed by him after many hours of meticulous work. All of it, except for one thing - the old stone well.

He found the well pretty early on in making up the garden, and had hated it ever since. The wretched object appeared there of its own volition and refused to be removed under any circumstances. And Friedkin wanted it removed very much, because - although he would not admit it to himself - the thing creeped him the hell out. He didn’t know what it was about it that made his skin crawl, but it very much did. And yet it refused to disappear no matter how much he wished for that.

He tried looking into it once, and discovered a gaping pitch black hole inside. The hole stretched out into infinity; it looked like a hole in the very fabric of reality, and it just did not stop. And even when he managed to make the well go invisible for a few seconds, the hole remained. It simply would not be moved, so he settled for having it covered by the well, and also a dense shrub of rhododendron all around.

Knowing all this, it made sense to check the well for a possible doorway into reality. Didn’t make it any less creepy though.

“Here goes then,” Friedkin whispered to himself, taking the first cautious step towards the shrub-covered nemesis. 

He walked up to it, slowly, and moved the branches away, slowly, and held his breath as he leaned slightly forwards and peered into the depths.

“Yep,” he said, and his voice did not echo but drowned in the darkness below, “the hole is still there. What do you think then?” he asked one of his projections, taking a step away from the well, just in case. “Could this be like, a portal outside?”

“Might be a portal,” the other one responded, “might be a door into a completely different place. Or a slide right into a black hole. Or just a normal well.”

“That was very helpful, thanks.”

“Point is, you won’t find out till you jump in.”

“But do I have to though?”

“Did we have any better ideas?”

“No,” original Friedkin agreed, “no we didn’t. Eh. Okay. I might, like… die. I might not come back from this if I jump.”

“They will all die if you don’t,” the other pointed out, “or a lot of them anyway.”

“True. That’s… that is also true. Ugh,” Friedkin muttered, “I’ve really cornered myself here, huh? Guess I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

“I don’t have any good ones though!”

“Well what feels like the least bad?”

At that moment, all projections disappeared, and he was left alone with just his thoughts and the terrifying, beckoning gap in the fabric of reality in front of him. So he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t really think about it either. He put his hands on the stone brim of the well, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for a second. The flowers were blooming and the scent lingered in the air; the sun rays brushed his face with their warm fudge-y fingers. It was all rather heavenly, and it was all in his head.

He opened his eyes. Looked around. He was standing in a pitch black space, empty, bare and cold, and he was so utterly alone, and next to his feet was the hole.

“Here goes nothing,” Friedkin said, then closed his eyes again, and stepped forward into the gap.


	30. Chapter 30

There was something beautiful about the moment Ken stepped out of the elevator with a gun in his hand, in the same way an unbelievably messy room or an abandoned building can seem surprisingly lovely. It is one part appreciation for complexity and one part morbid human obsession with disasters. There’s just something about seeing a whole pot of cooked spaghetti scattered across the floor, walls, and ceiling with a man covered head to toe in tomato sauce sitting in the corner, sobbing. It’s the elegance of entropy. And it’s also just really fucking funny sometimes.

That is also exactly how Todd felt when Ken read out his lines and pointed the gun at the professor.

He understood logically that this was a very grim situation that was quite likely about to evolve into a full-blown gun fight, and yet he could not force himself to be serious. He looked around at the cave; he thought about everything that had happened so far, and everything that Dirk was claiming had happened even earlier. He took a few seconds to appreciate the sheer absurdity of what exactly was happening now… and then he started laughing.

It was very quiet at first - just a snicker, really - and he tried to cover his mouth with his hand to stop it going any further. Unfortunately it only made matters worse, and the next laugh to come out of his hand-covered mouth was not silenced as intended, but actually amplified. And soon enough he was just bending over laughing, unable to stop or breathe or do anything else but to laugh.

“Sorry am I interrupting something?” Ken asked, lowering the gun for a second and turning towards Todd. “Share with the class, maybe we all want a laugh.”

Todd, very aware that Ken’s gun was seconds from being pointed directly at his head, tried his best to calm down by pinching himself repeatedly, then broke down laughing again.

“Sorry,” he finally managed to say through debilitating bouts of giggles, “sorry, please don’t shoot me.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you.”

“I’m just…” Todd continued. “I mean… this!” and he made a broad gesture with his hand. “I guess I should have gotten used to it a long time ago but maybe you can’t get used to this. Seriously though, you? I mean, who the fuck are you even?!”

“Thank you Todd,” Dirk said, immediately stepping closer to Todd just in case, “that was a tremendously helpful remark. Did you get your negotiating with terrorists skills from youtube videos?”

“Shut up both of you,” Ken dismissed, “you do not concern me right now. And I don’t want to shoot anyone, I am here only for Prometheus.”

And he pointed the gun back at Roger.

“You’re late,” Todd commented, “you missed Dirk’s big speech. If you hadn’t missed it, you’d know you’re pointing the gun at the wrong person. God,” he snickered again, “I’m sorry, I can’t, this is just too funny. The only way this could get any funnier is if another person teleported here out of nowhere.”

And that is exactly what happened next, because no other rule of physics is as consistent as the rule of comedic timing - not even the rules of general relativity.

  
Next thing Todd knew, time had stopped.

He knew this because every single person around him had stopped moving; whether in the middle of a word, a blink, or a breath, they simply froze on the spot, everyone in the cave. Everyone, except for Amanda.

“Holy shit dude,” she breathed out, looking around herself in awe. “Am I having a new type of vision?”

“Guess I’m inside your vision then,” Todd called out from the other part of the cave.

“Todd?” she said, getting through the crowd of frozen people to walk up to him, “why are you inside my vision?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “has that ever happened before? Like, has anyone been inside your visions lately?”

“Yeah this guy who used to work for Black Wing. That was just a few days ago!” And she turned around on the spot, as if searching for him.

At that very moment, Friedkin was indeed standing very close to Amanda, and stomping his ghostly foot in frustration. It was pretty clear to him that they were not seeing him, but he of yet had not a single clue as to why it was occurring.

“Are the aliens doing this?” Amanda speculated, making some cautious steps around the cave. 

“Whoever is doing it, vicious cool,” Todd smiled. “Hey, let me try a thing.” With that remark, he walked up to Ken, grabbed his gun and tried to maneuver it out of his fingers. It did not work. “Huh,” Todd stepped away and scratched his eyebrow. “Not how this worked in those X-men movies.”

“Well if this is a vision,” Amanda continued, “it’s kind of a garbage vision. Is anything going to happen?” she asked to the ceiling. “Cause we haven’t got all day.”

Meanwhile Friedkin was yelling, jumping up and down, clapping next to their ears and generally doing everything imaginable to attract their attention - yet remained an invisible ghost.

“Come on then,” Friedkin thought, “I need to concentrate…”

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, pooling all of his attention into his corporeal form. He concentrated so hard that it made his ears pop and produced a few drops of ethereal saliva that ended up on his chin. He concentrated until he felt like he was about to develop a hernia, and finally something clicked in his head, and suddenly he could feel his hands and touch the walls and actually stomp his foot. 

Immediately, he walked up to Amanda and poked her in the shoulder.

“Aargh!” Amanda yelled, turning on the spot at once. “Jesus, dude, what the hell are you doing here?!”

“Return visit,” Friedkin grinned. “Listen, I don’t think I have a lot of time…”

“Aren’t you the one who stopped it?” Todd asked.

“Well, yeah, possibly, but I wasn’t trying to?” Friedkin replied. “I just really need to talk to her,” he pointed at Amanda, “I’ve no idea why everyone is like that or why you didn’t freeze as well. Guess you two come as a package.”

“Say your thing then!” Amanda urged.

“Yes. Right. So a lot of horrible stuff is about to happen,” Friedkin said, “and it’s like, very important that you prevent it, cause not only will a bunch of you be like very dead otherwise, but it will also totally mess with the structure of the Universe and trust me you don’t want that.”

“Fine,” Amanda nodded as if these were perfectly normal statements in a normal conversation, “so how do we prevent it?”

“Yeah so here’s the catch,” Friedkin continued, “I don’t really know? I just wanted to warn you and stuff.”

“Wow that was very helpful,” Todd muttered.

“Hey, I was very brave to come here!” Friedkin disagreed. “And I’m sorry that I can’t solve your problems for you but at least I gave you some time to think.”

As he said the last words, he felt a strange feeling in his stomach, as if he was being dragged slowly up by a thousand tiny strings attached to his body.

“I think I’m going back,” Friedkin managed to say, “good luck with everything!”

And with that, he was gone - and time began to move normally again.

*

There was a lot of shouting immediately following the pressing of the universal play button - a lot of shouting, and confusion, and pointing guns which really did not help with the shouting and confusion. Amanda did not even try to understand any of it. Instead, she hid as well as possible in one of the corners, sat down on the ground and began to think.

“Any ideas so far?” Todd asked literally three seconds after that.

“Not if you block my flow with the universal consciousness.”

“You gotta be making that up,” he chuckled.

She returned his gaze with a cold stare of death itself. “You don’t want to find out.”

He nodded cautiously at her and turned his head towards the crowd. Currently, Farah and Ken were engaged in some sort of absurd staring contest, watching each other’s guns for the smallest sign of movement. Lilly stood in front of Roger, shielding him from view, and was trying to explain something. Judging by Ken’s face, he was deliberately making an effort to not comprehend a single word.

“Anything?” Todd returned to Amanda. “The bosses seem tense. I think they’re waiting for this to sort itself out. No idea what they will do otherwise and really don’t want to find it out.”

“Shut up Todd,” she hissed, “I’m… ugh, I’m… I don’t know,” she gave up. “There’ll be a shooting. There’ll be a big horrible shooting and I can’t do anything!”

“Hey,” Todd muttered, lowering himself to the ground near her, “aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What am I forgetting?”

“Look at your hand,” he replied.

She did, and instinctively unclasped her fingers as she looked, making the magic wand drop to the ground.

“Use that maybe somehow?” Todd suggested.

“Yeah,” she agreed, taking the wand from the floor. “I can do this,” she told herself and Todd, only failing to mention that she never dared to even try use the wand ever since she brought it back from Wendimoor.

Now, the bloody wand… what was she supposed to do with it? She clutched the thing in her hands, slowly pointing it from one object to another. She focused on the slight tingling feeling in her fingers as she did so, and silenced her mind, letting in any whisper of the universe. For a little bit, nothing at all happened. Then, something flipped in her brain.

Suddenly she saw the cave as it was - a messed tangle of paths, possibilities and outcomes; a dense nest of chances, teaming with energy and information. It was clear and beautiful in her mind, like looking at a picture for a thousandth time and finally grasping the hidden meaning behind all the colourful splashes. She did not need the wand! She saw the reality and she could affect it. Just with her hand, just with her mind. 

Amanda closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again. She was now looking at a small collapsible table on which two glasses and a piece of alien equipment rested, and on top of the alien equipment rested a black cat.

“Todd?” Amanda called out as quietly as she could, hoping not to attract the attention of either Lilly, Ken, or the Bosses. “That cat… what’s up with the cat?”

“The… cat?” he repeated, desperately trying to keep track of everything going on in the cave at the same time. “Ah that one,” he realized, following Amanda’s pointed finger with his eyes. “That’s just a cat! Lilly brought him with her.”

“Does it have a name?”

“Is that important right now?!”

“I feel like it is. Right,” she gestured for Todd to leave and returned her gaze to the table. “Is it just me, cat,” she said to herself, “or are you watching me too?”

The cat shifted lazily on the table, moved its tail a bit, then blinked at Amanda. She blinked back at the cat. The cat tilted its head slightly to the side and blinked again. Amanda copied the movement and blinked back at the cat, slowly. When she blinked again, she kept her eyes closed, and suddenly, she felt like she was talking to the cat… and the cat was ready to listen.

*

Naturally, this was quite shocking for Amanda, as strange as her life had already been up to that point. It was less disturbing for the cat, since he had an even richer record of extraordinary experience. 

For one, he was not born a cat at all, but a hammerhead shark at the Seattle Aquarium, and spent his childhood swimming from one wall of the tank to another along with two of his sisters. The tank is where he grew, and ate a lot of fish, and was looked at a lot as well, and grew some more, and eventually became convinced that eating and growing and being stared at was all that life entailed. He was almost ready to come to terms with a life of comfortable confinement, when people came to his tank, took him out, and made him into a cat without asking his opinion.

Being a cat was not much different from being a shark as far as he was concerned. He still spent most of his time eating and growing, except this time the tank was considerably bigger and changed drastically every now and then. 

He was also sometimes taken to different places and thrown at people. He tried eating the people he was thrown at, but discovered that all his ethereal shark body could do outside of the cat shell was take one or two bites at most before being thrown back into the cat. Then a lot of things happened; he moved houses a lot, became friends with a human, bit into some more people, and eventually wandered off in some forest, where he spent the next six months of his life: hunting, playing, eating, and growing.

Cat wasn’t sure how he ended up on the Cooltown University campus one day; he did not give it much thought. By that time, he was fully grown, and had adjusted perfectly to being a cat. The life of precarious freedom was altogether more suitable for him than the life of an aquarium exhibit, and he preferred the company of other cats (and occasionally some humans) to the company of sharks.

In fact, he was now quite proud of being a cat. He did not remember the last time his ethereal entity had broken free. He felt that it had integrated fully with his body, became one with it, became at home. He also did not think about some poor cat soul swimming from one wall of a tank to another far away from this campus. He was the cat now. And he was happy.

  
So when the human looked at him and pleaded with him to do something, anything, to be the magical wand that will make the situation turn a hundred and eighty degrees, Erwin the cat did the most cattest thing he could think of - moved on the table, put his paw on whatever piece of equipment was in front of him now, and pushed it off.

It fell to the floor with a surprisingly loud bang.


	31. Chapter 31

Every conversation in the cave stopped.

Guns were lowered.

Silence filled every square inch of air and fell heavily on everyone’s shoulders.

Slowly, Amanda opened one eye, and peered cautiously at the floor beneath the table. The mysterious piece of equipment had cracked open and several flat pieces of material had fallen out of it. The cat was still lying on the table, tail wiggling slightly. The eyes of every single person in the cave were drawn to it.

“Okay,” Amanda told herself, getting up from the floor, “that… is a result.”

“Did you do this, human?” Sue demanded, rushing for the table to collect the pieces of the mystery device. “Do you understand what you just did?”

“I’m pretty sure it was the cat,” Dirk pointed out but was ignored.

“I understand,” Amanda nodded, making one cautious step forwards and immediately regretting it as dizziness almost made her lose her balance. “I can see it,” she tapped her temple lightly, “that, has landed just in the right way to force and emergency reset. Which means that every single person you have neutralized since you had landed is now waking up.”

She saw it in her mind, people waking up in their hospital beds, gasping for breath and trying to pull out tubes from their throats. Somewhere in Seattle, both Orson and Kevin McDougall came to life at the same time, in the same room, just a few meters away from each other. 

“You haven’t a clue what this will do,” Sue hissed through the translator.

“And you have no idea what else I can do,” Amanda replied. “Seriously,” she pulled her magic wand again, “you all have to shut up immediately, take a breather, and then start discussing everything amicably or I swear to god I’ll turn you all into beetroots.”

“You can’t do that,” Sandi dismissed with a laugh.

“How sure are you about that?” Amanda asked. “Huh? Sure enough to risk your life? Your career, maybe? Don’t think you can be a great manager as a fucking beetroot!”

Evidently, that was a credible threat, as everyone followed Amanda’s advice of shutting up.

“Right,” Amanda said, swaying, and leaned heavily against the wall, “now can someone deal with this mess? Dirk, maybe? Cause I need a lay down and a lot of candy.” And she slipped down the wall to the floor as both Vogel and Martin rushed in to help her out.

“Happy to help,” Dirk beamed, immediately taking the center stage. “You,” he pointed at Ken, “first of all, rude? You come all the way here demanding things, and then you don’t even listen to us? Second, and this you would know if you had let us explain, you’ve been pointing the gun at the wrong person. She is Prometheus,” Dirk explained, pointing at Lilly, “not Roger.”

“Impossible,” Ken scoffed, “we only have two distinct descriptions of Prometheus and he is a man, likely in his late seventies or early eighties.”

“Things change, pal,” Lilly said. “Leave Roger alone, he has nothing to do with this. I was the one to fix your stupid toys and I know enough government top secrets to prove this.”

“Third,” Dirk continued, “in case you haven’t noticed or figured this out yet, Lilly and her unfortunate employers over here are not human, and I doubt they will be as cooperative as the other people you’re keeping prisoner at Black Wing.”

“Yeah I’m not going anywhere,” Lilly confirmed casually, “you can die wishing.”

“I was not expecting a voluntary transportation,” Ken seemed unaffected by this, “that is why I brought a gun and asked for reinforcement.”

“You are not getting her,” Sue interfered, “because she is going with us. She is our citizen and also a criminal, and will be tried and judged by our laws.”

“And what if that doesn’t align with my plans?”

“I have never seen so much arrogance,” Sue chuckled. “Well, does a full commercial guard force of a species far more technologically advanced than yours unleashing its power on this planet align with your plans better?”

“You would be annihilated,” Sandi added. “We would lose a trading point, which is unfortunate, but has been done before.”

“Basically, you’re screwed,” Dirk summed up. “Also, your phone has been buzzing non-stop for the last ten minutes.”

“My… phone?” Ken asked, now struggling to process everything that was going on. He pulled the phone slowly out of his pocket and, still keeping a firm grip on the gun, pushed a few buttons and put the phone to his ear. “Supervisor Adams. Yes. Yes I can talk.” A pause. “You had a what?!”

There were no more remarks, suggestions, or threats on Ken’s side. He just stuffed the phone in his jacket and went straight for the elevator. Five minutes later he was already in his car, driving back to the Black Wing facility.

“He will not like what he will find there,” Amanda said, biting into a Twix. “Ominous transmission from witch over. Back to our conversation.”

“Thank you for the ominous transmission,” Dirk nodded, “now let’s roll back to where we were before this whole unfortunate interruption.”

“You mean trying to persuade us to commit corporate crimes with Elid?” Sue asked. “Cause after everything that just happened, I am suddenly less inclined to agree.”

“You sure about that?” Lilly said, giving her one of her famous nasty fake smiles. “Oh look, what do we have over here,” she added, walking up to the remains of the mysterious device on the floor and kicking it lightly with her foot, “oh right, some pathetic remains of a universal command modulator. Impressive how it just completely fell apart after a fall from this teensy tiny table huh? They just don’t make them to last anymore,” she tutted, “planned obsolescence and all.”

“Where are you going with this?” Sandi interrupted, one piece of the modulator stuck awkwardly in between her fingers.

“Well, you know what this means,” Lilly shrugged, kicking the pieces again, now with a little bit more force, “all the humans have woken up with their memories, every piece of tech you’ve wiped is working again… you’ll have a lot of issues to deal with, my friends, and at least one modulator to fix. And guess who is very good at covering up alien tracks and fixing devices?”

“Yes!” Dirk exclaimed, delighted, and clapped his hands a few times for good measure, “Brilliant! Exactly what I was going for. Don’t you see?” he spoke towards the bosses. “You need her. This is the best possible arrangement for both of you. Take her place. Tell everyone back home that she’s dead. Clean up each other’s messes and part ways as grateful colleagues.”

“You’re not giving us much choice,” Sandi pointed out, “twisting our arm, more like! I assume Elid here would not keep her mouth shut about every single instance of incompetence on our part she can think of…”

“I will be very loud about it, yes,” Lilly confirmed, grinning. “I’ve kept notes on my phone too.”

“Horrendous violation of seventeen different aspects of our corporate code,” Sue pointed out.

“Just because its lawful doesn’t mean its right,” Lilly responded. “So take my advice and use this opportunity while you still have it. The corporate world will chew you up and spit you out if you make one wrong move. If you wish to still participate it, you better take any help you can get.”

Sandi and Sue looked at each other, then, in unison, removed their translator devices and marched to a remote place of the cave for another round of negotiations. Every cave-dweller watched them carefully until they turned around, also in unison, returned to the tiny table with the cat still sitting on it, and gave Lilly a single defeated nod.

“Splendid,” she beamed, “finally some sense and reason. Please, follow me into the ship. You also,” she added, pointing broadly at the Slavic Mafia. “You can come too Roger, if you want. I’ll make some slurm, we’ll all sit down and discuss this calmly like adults. And you,” she pointed at Erwin, who mewed back at her cheerfully, “don’t break any more things! I don’t have time to fix them.”

*

Ken spent his last few hours as the Black Wing Supervisor on the move. In a normal Black Wing situation, an array of vehicles would have been at his disposal on a snap of his fingers… but this was far from a normal situation. He wasn’t actually sure what it is that had happened back in the base. He just knew that it was serious, and that he needed to be there ASAP. So her threw all of his resources, knowledge and ingenuity into hitchhiking his way to a high security CIA base via car, bus, cornfield plane, subway, horseback, and a disgustingly overpriced taxi drive.

He had to cover the last five miles or so by foot, as the taxi driver could not go any closer to the base without the possible side-effect of being shot at from heavy-duty experimental weapons. Ken made sure that his identification tag was active and detectable, zipped his jacket to the very top and set out on a journey across barren marshes and grassy wastelands. As if to spite him, a drizzling cold rain erupted from the sky and blocked the already weak sunlight.

That was one of the reasons he saw the fire from quite far away, and almost broke into a run.

By the time he had gotten to the base, soldiers were already busy trying to contain the fire. He saw plenty of familiar faces around, but no one dared to approach him to explain the situation. Ken wasn’t sure whether he would be able to understand an explanation. He caught himself breathing heavily, heart accelerating, palms becoming slippery as his fingers tried to grab his gun for comfort. The base was gone; it was beyond any possible repairs. And he had no idea what had happened to the prisoners.

He was standing motionless quite a distance from the still brightly blazing fire, his brain scrambling to process how something like this could have ever happened, when one of the soldiers decided to approach him after all.

“Mr Adams, sir?” he began, and Ken flinched, spooking both himself and the soldier. “Just wanted to let you know that there are no casualties. From either personnel or subjects.”

“No bodies?” Ken asked.

“No bodies,” the soldier confirmed. “We believe this was all engineered for the escape. I’m afraid we’ve lost a lot of valuable equipment, as well as all the information that was stored on the facility server.”

Ken nodded, letting the words sink in slowly. The servers… he kept the most secret, the most precious information on a handful of computers and drives, some even in their original form of floppy disks or magnetic tapes. He thought it more secure to keep a single copy without uploading it anywhere else. Better to lose it all than have it leaked, he reasoned. Well, now the moment had come. He had lost it all.

“Do you have any clue where the subjects have gone?” Ken was not even looking at the soldier; one of his hands was stroking the gun idly, the other tugging the zipper of his jacket up and down by a single inch.

“Not as such, sir. Not yet,” the soldier responded. “Now, sir… colonel Wilson is looking for you. Should I invite her here or accompany you to a better location?”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Ken replied, waving for the soldier to go away. “Why are you looking at me like that, private?” he scoffed. “I am your supervisor and I said I’ll be there! I am capable of finding colonel Wilson myself, thank you very much. What do you expect me to do, run away or something?”

“Sir, of course not, sir!” the soldier saluted him immediately. “I will be off then.”

“Yes, please,” Ken shook his head in frustration. “I’m sure you have better things to attend to, like that fire over there, or the dozen or so of missing research subjects. Amateurs,” Ken said to himself when the soldier disappeared from view - then turned around and began to run.

  
He ran without a single break till he reached the edge of a nearby forest in which he knew every path and hiding place, including some that no soldier would have the imagination to check. He made sure to discard his identification tag, tracking chip and the gun as well back at the base. Ken wasn’t stupid, or naive for that matter. He had always known that Black Wing tended to be highly unpredictable and volatile, and he had prepared for such a moment since day one. Somewhere far from here, out in the highway, he had a dedicated roadside KFC in which he could hide and activate the next steps in his escape plan.

He just needed to get out of this forest.

The first half was silent, and peaceful and almost pleasant, and he could almost trick himself into experiencing it as a lovely walk in a park. 

“Nature is beautiful,” he thought to himself, “and a fast-paced walk is wonderful for your health. Breathe in the air. Enjoy how clean it is. It won’t be this pleasant in the basement of a roadside KFC.”

The banter of his mental monologue cheered him up, and he began to step with even more confidence, feet splashing across puddles and zigzagging between leaf piles and moss patches. 

He realized that he was being followed less than five minutes later.

At first, he ignored it, operating on the childhood monster logic of “if I can’t see them, they can’t hurt me.” He tried very hard to persuade himself that just this once his intuition really was off, and he was about to reach the other edge of the forest alone, and pass over to the highway safely. Then a branch snapped well behind him; a branch he did not step on.

He froze on the spot… there were steps behind him - soft, careful steps. Steps he recognized. He took a deep breath in and turned around.

“Hi Ken,” said Bart, and put a gun directly to his temple.

“Hi Bart,” he replied, perfectly calm. “Nice escape. I am impressed.”

“It was a long time in the planning,” she responded without a shadow of a smile on her face. “More or less since the first day you locked me up.”

“That makes sense, sure,” he raised an eyebrow at her. “You came to me by choice, remember? We did not catch you. I was never planning to contain you anyway.”

“That was by choice,” she nodded, “I needed to know.”

“Know what?”

“Needed to know whether there was still any you inside of you.”

“O…kay?” Ken wanted to tilt his head to the side in confusion, but the gun pressed to his face made that maneuver rather difficult. “Not sure I understand but I appreciate the thought.”

“I wanted to be sure,” Bart continued, “that my friend Ken was completely gone from you. That I killed you for good.”

“And…” he said, rather sad all of a sudden. “Was I, still…”

“There is something,” Bart said softly, “but I’m not sure it’s enough. And I can’t go on anymore. The universe is very loud, in my head. It won’t shut up until I let it choose.”

“You don’t have to do this, Bart,” Ken muttered, “you really don’t. My life in Black Wing is over. They will shoot me themselves if they will find me. Hey,” he suddenly remembered something, “do you still want to run away and live in Miami? We can do that now! We can have a simple normal life Bart, I promise.”

“I’m sorry,” she shook her head, a hint of tears gleaming in her eyes, “too late. Every day. Every day you woke up and chose to be the supervisor. It’s a bit too late to choose not to be supervisor when that choice was made for you already.”

“Fair enough,” Ken said, and closed his eyes. “Goodbye, Bart. I am really glad I met you.”

“Goodbye, Ken,” she said coldly, and pressed the trigger.

  
The gun did not fire.

  
“Huh,” she put the gun away from his head and fired into the sky.

The blast roared across the silent forest, raising a flock of birds into the air. She put the gun back to Ken’s head and fired again… still nothing happened.

“Well,” Bart shrugged, pocketing the gun and turning in the opposite direction, “guess the universe decided to give you one last chance. See you around, maybe,” she added and disappeared into the forest canopy as if she was never there.


	32. Chapter 32

1

Amanda was having a delightful nap dream free of any good or bad omens when Friedkin knocked on the door and, not getting a reaction out of either Amanda or the dream characters, slipped into the room on tiptoes and stood watching near a wall.

He found himself in a spacious, cozy kitchen, with flowerpots on the windowsills and decorated napkins on the table. The details were all fluctuating and blurry, of course, as dreams usually were. 

He had a steep learning curve himself, figuring out how to navigate the imaginary spaces of backstage. It required a certain kind of liquid concentration, clarity of the mind (which Friedkin already possessed in buckets) and calmness of touch (which he had to work on rather more). It took him a while to master - exactly how long he wasn’t sure, since he hadn’t invented imaginary time yet at that point - but he adapted wonderfully in the end. He only ever had smaller slips, like turning his own head into a pumpkin for a few minutes. Nothing alarming at all.

Now, he walked among the dream with confidence, stabilizing the details with a single swift motion of his hand. Amanda hadn’t noticed him yet. She was engaged in a lively conversation with Martin (who looked perfectly normal), Vogel (who also looked normal and was wearing a dress), a person Friedkin did not recognize who turned out to be Amanda’s classmate from high school, and oscar-nominated actress Naomie Harris.

They were all having tea with cupcakes and Friedkin almost lost thread of the conversation (which was nonsensical to begin with), distracted by how nice those cupcakes looked. Dream food, he thought, was the best; not only did it taste exactly as amazing as you remembered, it also never contained a single gram of real sugar or saturated fat.

He waited for the dream to flow forward naturally, until the kitchen disappeared along with the guests, replaced by a garden bursting with a trillion colours simply too vivid to be real. That is when he approached Amanda with a friendly smile on his face, and was met with a slight scowl.

“Not you again,” Amanda rolled her eyes, “I’ve just gotten the hang of this,” she added, showing him a daisy-chain made from some magical flower.

“This is a dream,” Friedkin told her.

“Sure it is,” she dismissed, but before she could say anything else, he snapped his fingers, making her blink and stop, mouth slightly open in surprise. “Damn. Yes. Of course. I’ve missed all the signs again, haven’t I, and I’ve been… wait. Why are you in my dream?”

“You’re tired,” he explained, sitting down on the emerald grass. “It wouldn’t work if I tried to contact you in the real world. I think. Cause I don’t really understand that much, honestly. Like I know things, right? All of the things. But I don’t understand them. Anyway,” he tapped the grass near himself, inviting her to sit down as well, “I’ve been hopping in and out of backstage and I am discovering a lot of things. Some of them cool, some of them scary. Some just really weird.”

“Weird… how?” Amanda asked, sitting down next to him.

“Weird like, not making any sense whatsoever,” he shrugged, “I’d try to describe it but I’d need to invent some new words for it, I guess. And they don’t sit well in my head either. I really kind of hate this entire situation,” he frowned for a second. “But maybe I’ll find a way to get my actual body out of the backstage. Oh, also, how did it go? Did you solve everything?”

“Yeah, actually!” Amanda smiled. “Did not expect it to work but seems like it did. They are still negotiating, those bosses and Lilly and everyone, but I think it will be okay.”

“Oh good. Phew,” he breathed out in relief, “cause I was really worried! I’ve tried to find that book to see if the ending had changed but I couldn’t. Think I threw it so hard it landed in a parallel dimension.”

“I think I did it,” Amanda carried on, “with my mind? Somehow. I had a moment in that cave, when it felt like I was seeing these different treads and times, how they were moving, and how they were all connected. And it’s like I caught one of those strands in my hand and pulled it towards me.”

“See, you’re getting there,” Friedkin nodded. 

“I don’t need the magic wand, yeah?”

“You don’t need anything other than your head.”

“But… why?” she chuckled suddenly, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’re telling me I am some sort of reality-affecting demon witch or whatever?”

“Or your universe wi-fi is just a bit better than for most people,” Friedkin shrugged. “You’ve been downloading a lot lately. Now you’re branching out into uploading. You’ve noticed it, haven’t you?”

“What, the cracks?” she asked, a hint of exhaustion in her voice.

“Yes. Those. Nasty things,” he wrinkled his nose in slight disgust, “I’ve been watching them for a while. One has been getting bigger but now it shrank down again. That gave me hope that you worked it out. Prevented the bad ending.”

“But I don’t want all of this!” Amanda exclaimed in frustration. “I don’t want these powers. Why do things keep happening to me against my will?”

“I didn’t want to end up in the backstage either,” Friedkin said, “but hey. You get used to it. Sometimes, things just happen cause it’s just like that, right?”

“What a profound piece of wisdom…”

“…And you don’t always know how they happen or why the happen to you, and sometimes they really suck. But you can always become the boss again. Start helping yourself. Let other people help you. Can’t control everything, but if you have someone to rely on, at least someone willing to stand with you… it’s not so bad,” he smiled. “I only had myself and wow, I annoyed myself so much in the beginning, you have no idea, but eventually me and my other me’s became great friends.”

“You have gone completely mad in the backstage,” Amanda pointed out.

“Oh absolutely,” he beamed, “but also I’m right cause like, come on, I have all the info, I have to be right.”

They both laughed at it for a second, and as they got distracted, the field around them slowly morphed into a bench in front of some building.

“Right. I better be going,” Friedkin announced, “so two things. First - keep an eye on the cracks. Something huge is happening and we should all be on the lookout. Second, you know how there are more people like Dirk and the Rowdy? Cause you should start looking for them too.”

“Wow that was super vague and unhelpful but thanks I guess,” Amanda smirked. “Cracks, holistics, become the boss of things. Got it.”

She was about to wake herself up from the inside of the dream when another question occurred to her. She turned around to where Friedkin was standing just a second ago and found herself staring at a vast wasteland of blackness. Every detail was gone from the dream, and so was Friedkin.

“Any big revelations for me then?” Amanda asked, staring up at the blackness. “Final words of encouragement?”

A moment later, she was awake, and Todd was standing near her and gently shaking her by the shoulder.

  
2 

They crawled out of the cave in the early morning hours of Sunday, rubbing their eyes and trying to get accustomed to sunlight again. The desert was as empty as ever; their cars and vans were still in their place and largely unscathed, apart from the multiple scorpions which had decided that the roof of Farah’s car was the prime free real estate deal they had been searching for their entire life. Lilly removed the scorpions with ease.

“They don’t sting you unless they really have to,” she explained, catching them by the tail and dropping them to the ground, “unlike wasps, which hate you personally and will absolutely sting you if you as much as look at them wrong.”

A few minutes were spent checking various pockets and bags for potentially forgotten objects and making sure that the entrance to the cave was once again covered by sand.

“What’s gonna happen to the spaceship then?” Dirk asked, helping to push sand with the side of his shoe.

“Bosses will take care of it,” Lilly replied, “it’s company property and all. I got it back to operational so they’ll just check it back in.”

“Isn’t it missing a whole lot of important parts?” Todd frowned slightly. “I thought those guys,” he pointed at Slavic Mafia, who were busy pushing their van out onto road, “were selling bits of it for years.”

“Oh they were not taking anything crucial,” Lilly said, “they were quite smart about it, actually. It’s like breaking into a car but only taking the car radio. Right,” she patted the sand with her hand for good measure, then stepped back to admire their work. “That will do.”

“And what are you going to do?” Dirk asked, looking first at Lilly, then at Roger who was standing close, the box with Erwin the cat in his hands.

“The current plan is to get back to Seattle,” Roger responded, “and we’ll figure it out from there. A lot of discussion and catching up to do.”

“You don’t have to drive us all the way,” Lilly added, “drop us off in the nearest city. I have a friend in LA, they’ll come over to help out.”

In the background, the Slavic Mafia had finally managed to push their van back onto the road, after which the bosses kindly informed them that this could have been achieved using one simple setting of their device. They did not come over to say goodbye; instead, they simply jumped into their van and rolled away. Dancho waved at them through the window as they wheezed past in the general direction of San Francisco. 

“We’ll be off soon as well,” Amanda chimed in, jumping out of the back of the Rowdy van. “After Martin deals with the engine. That car is getting old,” she mused, “might be time for a new one.”

“So I don’t wanna sound paranoid,” Todd began, walking away from the group and towards Amanda, “but are you okay? Broadly speaking. Cause that whole bit in the cave, with time stopping and…”

“I’m fine,” Amanda smiled briefly, “seriously. I mean, I am not fine, I’m amazing. I mean, okay,” she added after he rolled his eyes, “yes, everything that keeps happening to me is more than mildly disturbing and if I had a choice I’d rather, uh, not, but,” she paused for a second, “but… I am learning to be okay with it and that’s the important point.”

“You sure?” Todd insisted. “I don’t know if it’s just me, but everything feels more… intense lately. Like a storm is coming, very, very slowly.”

“It’s not just you,” she said, “but I’ll deal with it. Trust me,” she looked over his shoulder at the Rowdy throwing empty soda cans at each other’s heads and smiled again, “I’ve got people I can rely on.”

“Fine. I’ll just have to deal with the fact that my little sister really can take care of herself then.”

“Yes please!” she laughed shortly. “I’ll call you more often. Also, I am begging you to talk to Farah, and also to Dirk.”

“I’m not sure I have something to talk about.”

“And that’s exactly why you should talk to them. Seriously, Todd… stop running away from yourself.”

“Will do,” he nodded, and pulled her into a hug. “Alright. Go say goodbye to everyone. And stay safe on the road.”

  
Eventually, the only people left were Dirk, Todd, Farah, Lilly and Roger. There was also Erwin, but he was fast asleep in his box, dreaming of the deepest, darkest oceans he had never seen himself. Soon enough, everyone was in the car with Farah at the wheel, ready to leave the desert for good.

“I quite like this planet, you know,” Lilly mused, looking out of the window as they were driving away, “no, actually I fucking love this planet. But one place I am not going to miss? The goddamned desert. Nothing against it, personally… I just really, really hate sand.”

  
3 

“Life is very good,” Amanda thought, pouring sand out of her shoes, “and on this topic alone, I refuse to change my mind in the face of any contradicting evidence.”

The van was rolling fast across the empty roads, with Cross at the wheel and Gripps changing the radio stations every few seconds on the passenger seat next to him. Amanda felt awful; she was hungry, severely in need of coffee, and yearning for a hot shower and a fresh pair of socks that did not have the entire Californian desert in them. At the same time, she felt happier than she had in a long time.

A few steps away from her, Beast was making bracelets from a new batch of collected junk, while Martin and Vogel were clearing the van’s floor from empty cans and candy bar packages. Gripps had finally settled on a station and was singing along horribly at the top of his lungs to a Green Day song. The noise was overwhelming; it was threatening to give her a headache. It also made her even happier.

“Any plans for the next few days and/or years, drummer?” Martin asked, noticing her faint smile and absent stare.

“Some,” she nodded in agreement. “One of the first things, boys and Beast… how do you feel about some networking?”

“Networking?” Vogel repeated. “Is that a sport game that’s like volleyball but stupid?”

“No that’s netball,” Martin disagreed, “networking is when you put together pieces of fabric to make a craft.”

“That’s patchwork,” Cross shouted from the front, “networking is when Internet providers treat all websites equally.”

“That’s net neutrality you’re thinking of,” Gripps told him, “networking is the channel that shows Adventure Time.”

“That’s Cartoon Network,” Beast said, then signed something that could be roughly translated as “networking is when all the workers unite to protect each other’s rights.”

“That, uh,” Amanda frowned for a second, “I don’t actually know what that is. A labour union I guess? Anyway, what I mean is, do you want to go looking for other people like us? Holistic, I mean.”

There was a momentary pause, then a general sound of enthusiastic agreement.

“Nice,” she smiled, “but before we do that, can we make a stop at a specific gas station?”

  
Amanda wasn’t sure how she managed to remember and locate the exact gas station she was thinking of, or what arrangement of events ensured that it was completely empty, apart from the girl at the counter. Just in case, she looked up briefly at the sky and gave it a thumbs up. “See, universe,” she thought, “you really can do it, if you try.”

Tamika didn’t notice her walking in. She was too busy making an enormous pyramid out of paper cups, hovering on tiptoes over it, just the tip of her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration. Amanda managed to walk all the way to the counter without being seen. She gave the girl a few seconds to react, then knocked on the counter.

“Yes hello what can I help you with?” Tamika replied on autopilot, then turned around, saw Amanda, tried to stand up straight and fix her hair in one move, and knocked over the entire paper cup pyramid with her elbow. “Oh,” she mumbled, her cheeks getting even darker than they usually were as she blushed, “hi.”

“I was going to call first,” Amanda explained, smiling, “here’s the money I owe you.” And she handed over a fifty dollar bill. “Don’t need the change.”

“Is that… all?” Tamika took the money and stuffed it into her pocket, visibly disappointed.

“Well…” Amanda began. “Depends. Would you like to quit your job and run away with me and my gang of weirdos to roam the streets and try to figure out the laws of the multiverse and beat up jerks occasionally and maybe possibly go on a date with me but only if you want to?”

“Girl,” Tamika grinned, leaning slightly over the counter, “you had me at ‘quit your job’. Even if you followed it with ‘let’s go live as outcasts in the Siberian taiga’, I would have been on board. But yes. Yes to all of it.”

“And the last bit?”

“Yes. Very much the last bit.”

  
The gas station shop was locked and the “out of order” sign left blazing. A single quickly scribbled note on the counter declared that Tamika would not be returning, ever, and the check with her remaining salary would have to be sent to the provided address. 

“Careful,” Amanda said, letting Tamika into the van, “the ceiling is not very high.”

“Mm,” Tamika nodded, and took a seat near the window. The inside of the vehicle was a lot to take in at once.

“Right then, boys and girls and everyone else,” Amanda announced, “let’s roll.”

“This is nice, drummer,” Martin smiled, shaking Tamika’s hand. “You’re bringing people in. Feel like a proud dad of a big family.”

“The more people, the better,” Amanda replied.

“True that. Tell you what though,” Martin added, sliding left on his seat, “…I think we will need a bigger van.”

  
4 

Despite spending several days in a deep coma of unknown genesis, the doctors were happy to report that neither of their mystery patients had suffered any adverse effects. Both woke up with full memories of what happened to them just before they lost consciousness; both opted to give a generic “I felt very weak all of a sudden” stories instead.

One of the first things Kevin did once he could talk normally again was call the detective agency and ask for their bank account details. He would not listen to any of Farah’s polite protests. As far as he was concerned, she did her job perfectly. He was alive and healthy after all, his pacemaker replaced for an ordinary device with an ordinary battery, and the being watched feeling had disappeared completely and never came back. So he absolutely insisted on paying the full price he promised.

Orson observed Kevin with mild curiosity. They talked to each other during their week or so of recovery, and quickly discovered that, despite growing up in the same state of the same country, they were living in completely different worlds.

Every day, Kevin would learn a plethora of facts he previously had no idea about. On one occasion, while they were having dinner together in their shared hospital room, Orson complained about likely going into debt to pay his medical bills (as the job of a mercenary did not involve a health insurance), which shook Kevin to his core. He did not know that people had to pay for their healthcare. The whole concept seemed ridiculous to him.

“And what do people do if they can’t pay for their meds?” Kevin asked.

“Depends,” Orson shrugged, “take out a loan. Ask people for money online. Some sort of a satanic ritual is an option, I suppose.”

Kevin did not discuss it further that day. It was a lot of information to process in one go.

  
Alexandra came to visit Kevin almost every day, and they talked a lot, too. Not every compromise was reached (especially on several art-related topics), but enough to finally declare that they could be friends again. She offered for him to stay at her place while he recovered and returned to full strength. He agreed without a moment of hesitation.

“What are you doing once you get out then?” Kevin asked during an evening hour of tea-drinking.

“Eh, you know,” Orson replied, “get back home. Pay the overdue rent. Get some crappy job to pay for everything.”

This surprised Kevin; he had no idea that people had to have awful jobs for a living. In his mind, every job was decently enjoyable and important, and only differed in the type of things you had to do for it. He asked Orson what he would really want to do, if he could actually choose. He paused for a few moments. He had not been asked this question since middle school.

“Social worker, maybe?” he responded eventually. “Or school psychologist. Something to do with people. I love working with people. Just never had the money to go to college.”

This surprised Kevin; he had no idea you had to pay for any college. In his mind, most colleges and universities were free, and you only paid to get in if your grades were not good enough. He spent half the night googling things and thinking over different options as his entire picture of the world set out on a continental shift. In the morning, he was ready to share his new exciting idea with Orson.

“So I was thinking,” Kevin said, “that I can just like, start paying for other people’s things? Medical bills, college degrees… just give people money for a bit so that they can change their job. That kind of stuff. Cause I think… people like me should not have this much money. No. I think people in general should not have this much money… God I don’t even know how much money I have!” he laughed. “ I have people to tell me that. That seems very stupid. I should do something about that too.”

“Yeah,” Orson nodded, “that sounds like a nice plan. Like something that would make you happy.”

“Great! I’ll start with you then. What sort of degree did you want?”

“Oh,” Orson’s eyes widened in surprise, “I’m, uh, I’m not sure I can, really. Forty seems a bit too late to get a completely new career.”

“Why the hell not?” Kevin asked. “I’ve heard that people in Japan get degrees in their sixties and seventies. You’d be a young man in a Japanese university.”

“Well…” Orson began, his brain full of a thousand reasons why he still couldn’t do it… then gathered up all those thoughts and chucked them into an imaginary bin. “Oh screw it, yes! Yes, I’ll go to college. You know how they say, you only live once.”

  
5

The two unfortunate sales managers spent their entire two week flight back to Ursa Major Collective going meticulously over every tiny detail of their fictitious cover-up report. They double-checked all the dates, then checked them again independently from each other, hoping to expose the other for mistakes (there weren’t any). They fabricated an entire autopsy report and argued endlessly over the made-up time of death. They had a four hour long discussion over all the corrections they were going to make on Lilly’s reports, and a six hour long discussion on how they were going to seamlessly slip in the suggestion of taking over the operation.

When, at last, they arrived to the spaceport (Lilly’s ship in hyperspace tow, jumping out a whole day later due to dimensional fluctuations), they felt incredibly prepared for any possible questions.

The only question they were asked was “so did you get there and back okay?”.

The carefully edited and manufactured reports were handed over to the oversight managers, who gave them to their assistants to skim over and summarize the most important bits. That one page summary was sent further without reading through fifteen different steps of the corporate hierarchy ladder, during which they were mostly only read by secretaries and ticked as read by workers while checking their emails in the bathroom. Eventually the entire fifty page text was transformed into a single digit in a column and shown in tiny font on a presentation during a board of directors meeting, who stamped the entire spreadsheet with their blanket stamp of approval.

Neither the board of directors or the CEOs ever found out there was once a person called Elid who faked their own death and abandoned their citizenship and career to discuss obscure physics with a bunch of humans in the distant corner of the Milky Way on a planet known to almost everyone outside it by just two words: mostly harmless.

Meanwhile, fifty light years away, on that very same planet, four engineers were drinking tea with lemon and discussing something loudly in a variety of Slavic accents.

“Right,” Grażyna said, then stuffed a whole chocolate chip cookie in her mouth and spent a few seconds chewing, washing it down with tea eventually, “the raw materials talk - done. For today, at least. I cannot hear another word about taxes or I’ll go insane. So… what about the tech?”

“Depends,” Dancho replied, “Are we getting blueprints or are we getting licenses to produce?”

“Blueprints. They’re only offering the stuff that’s been their equivalent of public domain for ages. Nothing too revolutionary.”

“Like a better Playstation?” Milena asked.

“No, like a battery that’s maybe twenty percent more efficient at energy storage than the best one we have.”

“Well that would be huge…”

“Exactly. Hey, maybe a better Playstation too, hell knows. Anyway,” Grażyna continued, “we need to figure out what to do with it.”

“We can’t sell that to some huge company,” Dancho pointed out.

“Obviously not,” Grażyna agreed, and everyone else nodded energetically as well, “I don’t want my old bosses to ever meet my new bosses. Ew.”

“We could deal with it ourselves,” Milena suggested, “set up a company and…”

“No,” Grażyna shook her head, “not dealing with that either. We’ll already have to manage a whole supply-demand chain for like fifteen different metals and minerals. Ugh. We’ll have to hire people…”

“What about then,” Varya began, “if we track people who already working on the technologies, talk to them, and be like hey, we have an idea, want to take a look?”

“Huh,” Dancho scratched his ear thoughtfully, “but that’s just… giving it away?”

“You want monetize it?” Varya asked.

“Oh we’ll be getting a shitton of money from the other stuff,” Grażyna dismissed, “I just want that stuff off my hands and doing something useful.”

“That’s brilliant then,” Milena said, and sipped her rapidly cooling tea, “first, they’ll know exactly what to do with it, second, it won’t even be that suspicious, and third, those would be mostly engineers in universities, right? So they are probably less likely to use it for shady stuff. Yeah, Varya… that’s genius.”

“See, I say smart stuff sometimes,” she beamed, “like when I said we should go to desert for fun.”

“That was not a smart idea,” Grażyna laughed, “but hey, from the current point of view? I’ll grant you that as a move of visionary genius.”

  
6 

The Cooltown Universtity Institute of Physics and Applied Mathematics was still standing firmly in its place when they came back from California, and Lilly was simultaneously relieved and slightly disappointed to find it intact. They arrived very early in the morning on a Tuesday; the premises were largely empty, apart from a couple of grad students coming back home after a long night in. A pleasant, peaceful silence fell on their shoulders, like a sloppily but lovingly made jumper that used to be prickly once, but was now nothing but softness, comfort and memories.

Roger couldn’t help but smile when they approached the building. Fifty years he had dedicated to this place, so many decades spent working hard while getting honestly not that much for that hard work… and he did not regret a single second. He had always believed that people did not go into academia for the salary, or the status, or prestige - no, academia was for those who could not imagine themselves anywhere else. Who would have withered away from sadness were they to be deprived of their beloved topic of interest. It belonged to those who cared so passionately and so stupidly that they simply had to live their lives surrounded by that passion. And he was just like that.

Yes, Roger thought to himself as Lilly opened the back door with her key and let them both in… if someone was to offer him a second life, a complete rewind from the beginning, he would have spent it exactly in the same place.

  
They went up the stairs to Roger’s office, and put the music box (now missing a key from its middle) on its dedicated place on the shelf, and made tea for two. The atmosphere felt just a tad awkward and constrained. Here they were, next to their closest person in the entire world, desperate to speak yet not quite sure how to start. 

“You know I come from a line of sturdy bastards?” Roger said at last, half-joking, half-serious. “My parents both made it into their nineties. Mother was 93 when she died, father was 91. And my grandpa Daly, he was a mighty old jackass. Made it till 96.”

“What did he die of?” Lilly asked with a faint smile on her face.

“Fell of a ladder while picking apples.”

“Oh drop it!”

“I’m serious!” Roger chuckled softly. “He got up on a ladder to pick apples on the farm, fell down backwards, hit his head and died. So all I’m saying is, life might not be over for me just yet. Yes, quite! Might have another ten, even fifteen years here, huh?”

“Yeah just don’t climb any ladders please,” she smirked.

“And after my time is done,” he continued, “you don’t lose yourself in mourning, like I did because of you. Keep going. There are people out there, so many good people. The world doesn’t start and end with me.”

“I don’t think there are others, Roger,” she sighed. “I’m pretty sure you are The One.”

“Well why can’t there be another The One,” he replied. “Look, I found you twice! Who says you can’t find another me.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Well you better make it work,” he insisted, “because from what I’ve gathered you’re staying here on this planet for longer than I will be staying, and it is too miserable to deal with on your own. You don’t have to find another me, you know. You can just have someone. Just someone to care about.”

“Yeah, alright,” she gave up, rolling her eyes for a split second, “I can probably manage that.”

They paused for a second, enjoying their tea. Both felt a terrifying black hole form somewhere in the pits of their stomach. Perhaps it was a deep, existential sadness… perhaps hunger. They did not have any snacks to go with the tea.

“You know, I did suspect things about you,” Roger mused.

“Oh really?”

“Yes,” he nodded, “when you turned up at the institute out of nowhere - a stranger, and so familiar at the same time. Except I thought you’d turn out to be Arthur’s secret granddaughter or some such.”

“That would be so predictable though, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, anyway…” she mixed the tea in her cup absent-mindedly, “I thought I’d want to jump straight into work, get this place running again, but actually I kind of want a holiday now. You know, after everything.”

“A holiday, you say?”

“Tell me what, our summerhouse… is it still around?”

“Still standing very much,” Roger confirmed proudly, “was robbed just a week ago by those managers of yours, but otherwise in near perfect condition.”

“Nice,” Lilly smiled, “so… what would you say to spending a few days to a week away from this all? Go for walks, go fishing maybe… play chess, catch up on some books. Talk.”

“I would say my enthusiastic yes,” Roger responded, “I have not taken a holiday in years. And I am retired!”

“Settled then,” Lilly declared, and downed the last few sips of her tea in one go. “And, oh, one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“I still have no one to leave the cat with,” she said, scratching her ear, “so… I guess there will be three of us.”

7

There was much cleaning up to do when they came back to the detective agency office.

In fact, it was almost surprising the place was not more thoroughly trashed, considering they had left it after two break-ins and a whole day of using it as a retreat/case brainstorming facility. They did not think about that before leaving, of course. Mundane concerns like that tend to get pushed to the periphery in the middle of an adventure. No one says to themselves, while actively being hunted by mildly homicidal aliens, “well I better throw away these uneaten pizza slices or they might attract rats.” And that, though reasonable, is exactly why the detective agency office now had rats.

Or one rat, to be precise. It was sitting on the coffee table in the guest room when Todd, Dirk and Farah unlocked the door and came in.

“This door is busted,” Farah pointed out as she attempted to put it back on its hinges to lock, “we’ll probably have to replace it.”

“We can replace this entire office with the money we got for this case,” replied Todd. “Or get a better one.”

“I don’t need a better one!” Dirk disagreed. “I love this office. It’s like a home to me. Well, a second home, after my actual apartment. Or maybe a third cause there’s also your place,” he pointed briefly at Todd, “and Farah’s too… point is, I am not changing locations just because I can technically afford it. This is perfect anyway. Look, we even have pets!” He beamed, pointing at the rat that sat perfectly still on the table, either unwilling or unable to move.

“Oh I bet we have more of those pets,” Todd chuckled, kicking an empty churro box with his foot, “hey, Mona, how come we have rats?”

“Only one rat,” Mona corrected. It wasn’t very clear where she popped in from; it could have been, with equal probability, from the couch, the table, or the straight from the floor. “I fed it with cookies and milk. I hope that is fine.”

“I’ve no idea,” Dirk told her, “but he looks happy.”

He attempted to pet the rat, which decided that, finally, it had reached the limit of politeness for the quality of food it was provided with, jumped off the table and darted for some far away corner.

“We better start cleaning this now,” Farah declared, “or we’ll get too scared and will be tempted to burn the whole place down.”

Everyone in the office, including Mona and even the crows that sat outside the window, whole-heartedly agreed.

  
The whole day was spent throwing out the trash, fixing the door, disassembling the giant corkboard full of now irrelevant clues, and washing every surface that was sticky or slimy or dirty in any other way. They ordered takeout somewhere in the middle of that heroic feat and enjoyed it sitting in a circle right on the floor. Nothing was urgent; there were no deadlines to beat or people to protect. On that afternoon, they could just enjoy each other’s company and the total lack of any sort of phone calls.

Eventually the work day came to a close and the tasks were done and over with. Dirk was dusting the last two shelves in his office, and Mona was sited on the windowsill outside, a magpie among the crows. 

“I’ll need some time off after all this,” Farah said, more to herself than to Todd, and leaned wearily against the nearest wall. “I did not realize a place this small could have so much dirt.”

“I need time off after the entire case,” Todd nodded in agreement.

“That too.”

“And I also need…” he hesitated, and looked at her, frowning slightly. “Hey, so I hope you don’t take this badly, but…”

“Yes?” Farah asked, and he could see the relief in her eyes immediately, which was enough for him to keep talking.

“I was thinking,” Todd said, “that we really are better off as friends.”

“Oh god, yes,” she breathed out, “sorry, I’m sorry if that sounded rude, I’ve just been thinking about this non-stop our entire drive from California.”

“Me too,” he exclaimed, “cause I was watching Roger and Lilly talk, and…”

“Yeah,” Farah nodded, smiling, “I thought, wow, I wish I had something like that. I wish I had a friend that close. And then I thought, isn’t that what we were trying to do? Cause we bonded so much while we were looking for Dirk… obviously, we’re close, obviously! But do you really want to be all romantic close, or do you want to be solid platonic with a bit more like, physical affection close.”

“Has to be second,” Todd smiled back, “cause I feel like, after that many attempts… if we keep trying to make this what it isn’t, we’ll just ruin what we already have.”

“Oh, thank you,” she muttered, and pulled Todd into a hug, “this was giving me so much anxiety, that exact worry, and you know I already have enough things to be anxious about.”

“Sure thing,” he told her, still holding on to the hug, “I need some time alone as well. Have more stuff to reconsider. Oh. You’re, um, you’re vibrating.”

“Sorry,” she broke the hug, blushing slightly, and pulled out her phone from her breast pocket. “That’s Tina. She must have woken up like an hour ago, that’s when she texts me the most.”

“You and Tina sure talk a lot.”

“Yeah,” Farah confirmed, already looking through the messages with a dreamy smile on her face. “We’re leaving, right? I’ll be in a car. Join me when you’re ready.”

And she walked out of the agency still reading through the texts on her phone.

  
Dirk emerged from his cabinet a couple minutes later, slightly out of breath and with a few chunks of dirt in his hair.

“That was a battle I was not prepared for,” he explained, and fell heavily onto the sofa. “I think I need some time to rest before we leave.”

“Sure,” Todd nodded, and took a cautious seat next to him. “Oh, you have some, uh,” he mumbled, pointing at Dirk’s hair.

“What?” Dirk asked.

Instead of trying to explain further, Todd reached forward and ran his finger’s through Dirk’s hair, removing all the dust.

“Done,” he commented, brushing his hands on the side of the sofa. “Uh, well, anyway… I just broke up with Farah. Again.”

“Oh I am so sorry Todd,” Dirk responded immediately, and it was very clear from his voice he was not that sorry, though definitely concerned and a little bit scared.

“It’s fine,” Todd assured him, “it was very amicable this time. We’ve decided we’re better as friends.”

“Well, that’s… better, I guess? Sorry, not very good at picking appropriate reactions for this sort of thing.”

“It’s fine. Just wanted to keep you informed. That I’m, you know, single. Completely.”

“Very valuable information,” Dirk replied, completely oblivious as to why the information was shared with him, “I will note that down. Todd Brotzman: completely single.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you… single?”

“Very strange questions today, Todd,” Dirk gave out a single laugh, still utterly confused by the whole exchange, “but yes, unless I’ve had some memory loss which I wouldn’t know about anyway, I’m pretty sure I am single.”

“Right then,” Todd declared, jumping out from the couch as if it became scolding hot all of a sudden, “that’s all I wanted to say. Dinner then? Farah’s in the car already.”

“Wonderful,” Dirk agreed, “I am starving for some rice noodles.”

  
The door did not lock properly, but they did not bother with trying to get it secured. It had Mona to keep a look on it, as well as a whole family of crows and one decently well-fed rat.

And besides, even if someone were to break into Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency… what in the name of all that is queer could they possibly hope to steal?

  
8 

“ _…what in the name of all that is queer could they possibly hope to steal?_ ”

“There,” Friedkin beamed, closing the book in one swift motion and setting it down on the coffee table, “that is a much better ending.”

“Not a bad book either,” one of the other Friedkins agreed.

“No, it wasn’t, like, terrible,” original Friedkin agreed, “a bit longer than I thought it would be. Hate it when I am tricked into reading too many words.”

He fell back into his armchair, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the peace for a few moments. By any fair standard, he deserved a firm handshake and possibly even a congratulatory card. Definitely a card, he thought. After the amount of jumps it took him to end up back in his beloved house, with the library and the garden and the oh-so-comfortable armchairs, he was seriously in need of some rest.

“Let’s see what’s going on then,” Friedkin said to his other selves, then imagined up a tall glass of beer and poached the remote from the coffee table.

He flipped through the channels for a while, never stopping on any for longer than a few seconds. At some point he almost fancied watching a species on the planet of Krumlatar invent fire for the first time, then changed his mind. He had seen the invention of fire five times already and there’s only so much variety you can get out of a major civilizational milestone before they start getting repetitive.

“Fine then,” Friedkin sighed, “if this one is not cooperating… let’s check out some other ones.”

He got up from his armchair and walked up to a door that was not in his house before. The door opened, slowly, and a few of the Friedkins peered in, slowly. The room was a cellar.

And inside the cellar was a straight row, stretching for so long it was either infinite or just unimaginably large in number, of identical television sets showing different pictures.

“I mean,” Friedkin smiled, “…there’s got to be something interesting happening somewhere… right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap! congratulations to making it to the end :D
> 
> it was a great pleasure to write this novel. i spent over six months with it, working on it every single day, sometimes for many hours a day. i also spent those months reading almost every Douglas Adams book there is, which was a joy all in itself. DGHDA is a big reason i actually managed to have at least something positive in my life in 2020 and this is my way of paying it back to the amazing DGHDA fandom. i am so unbelievably grateful for every person who engaged with this work in any way, it made me feel like i was not wasting my time during this horrible year
> 
> a separate shout-out goes to my QPP Felix, who helped a lot at the outlining/inventing the mystery stage of working on this novel and changed my mind about a lot of plot points (you can thank him for the fact that not a single character was killed off in this story - typically i am a bit more, uh, murdery with characters in my novels lol), as well to the amazing Dirk Gently's Holistic Server on discord who contributed several ideas and inspired even more elements of this book via discussion. i honestly feel like both Felix and the discord server can be credited as co-authors of this story
> 
> also a particular thank you to the small handful of people on tumblr who reblogged a lot of my chapter updates and commented on them, which was incredibly motivating, and everyone who commented regularly here as well. getting those tumblr replies and AO3 emails were the absolute highlights of my day many, many times
> 
> and that's it, i think. again, thank you so much for reading. hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> PS: in case anyone is wondering, the ending *does* leave potential for another novel/season, and i have one or two ideas for it... however, even if i will write another one of these, it will not be soon, as my next creative projects are two original novels (editing one and writing another), which will take Some Time. but there is a possibility... just saying..........

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy this novel and would like to show appreciation for it, kudos, comments, and social media shares help the work reach its audience and also bring me immense joy and are therefore incredibly appreciated.
> 
> For more Dirk Gently and Douglas Adams content, feel free to follow me on twitter and/or tumblr (links in profile)!


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